These emergency departments must meet the following criteria:
Purposely designed and equipped area with designated assessment, treatment and resuscitation areas.
Ability to provide resuscitation, stabilisation and initial management of all emergencies.
Availability of medical staff in the hospital 24 hours a day
Designated emergency department nursing staff and nursing unit manager 24 hours per day 7 days per week.
The scope also includes services where a patient is awaiting transit, had a pre-arranged admission, did not wait or died on arrival. Patients with Department of Veterans' Affairs or compensable funding source are also included in the scope of the collection.
The care provided to patients in emergency departments is, in most instances, recognised as being provided to non-admitted patients. Patients being treated in emergency departments may subsequently become admitted. The care provided to non-admitted patients who are treated in the emergency department prior to being admitted is included in this DSS.
Excluded from scope are:
Care provided to patients who are being treated in an emergency department site as an admitted patient (e.g. in an observation unit, short-stay unit, emergency department ward or awaiting a bed in an admitted patient ward of the hospital).
Care provided to patients in General Practitioner co-located units.
Collection and usage attributes
Statistical unit:
Emergency department stay.
Collection methods:
National reporting arrangements
State and territory health authorities provide the data to the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority (IHPA) for national collection, on a quarterly basis as required under national health reform arrangements.
Periods for which data are collected and nationally collated
Financial years ending 30 June each year.
Quarterly data collection commencing 1 July each year.
Implementation start date:
01/07/2013
Implementation end date:
30/06/2014
Comments:
Scope links with other metadata sets
Episodes of care for admitted patients are reported through the Admitted patient care NMDS.
Some previous data element concepts are available in the METeOR glossary. Glossary items are available online through links in the relevant metadata items. In addition, links to the glossary terms that are relevant to this data set specification are listed below.