National Health Performance Authority, Hospital Performance: Median waiting time for surgery for malignant cancer, 2011-12

Collection and usage attributes

Median waiting time for people who had urgent or semi-urgent surgery for malignant bowel, breast or lung cancer and who were on an elective surgery waiting list for that surgery.

Calculation of median waiting time: The median waiting time is calculated using an empirical distribution function with averaging in SAS^@4.

n (number of observations) x p (percentile value divided by 100) = i (integer) + f (fractional part of n x p)

For example, if there were 100 hospital separations, the median will correspond to the average time for the 50^th and 51^st observations. If there were 101 observations, the median will correspond to the time for the 51^st observation.

Median waiting times are calculated using hospital separations with:

• ICD-10-AM (7th edn) principle diagnosis codes
• Bowel cancer - C18, C19 and C20
• Breast cancer - C50
• Lung cancer - C34
• ACHI (7th edn) procedure codes:
• Bowel cancer: 3200000 3200001 3200300 3200301 3200400 3200401 3200500 3200501 3200600 3200601 3200900 3201200 3201500 3202400 3202500 3202600 3202800 3203000 3203900 3204700 3205100 3205101 3206000 3209900 3211200 9220800
• Breast cancer: 3030000 3033200 3033500 3033600 3150000 3151500 3151800 3151801 3152400 3152401
• Lung cancer: 3843800 3843801 3843802 3844000 3844001 3844100 3844101 9016900
• Elective surgery waiting list episode- clinical urgency code:

1. Admission within 30 days desirable for a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly to the point that it may become and emergency
2. Admission within 90 days desirable for a condition causing some pain, dysfunction or disability but which is not likely to deteriorate quickly or become an emergency

• Elective surgery waiting list episode—reason for removal from a waiting list:

1. Admitted as an elective patient for awaited procedure by or on behalf of this hospital or the state/territory
2. Admitted as emergency patient for awaited procedure by or on behalf of this hospital or the state/territory

Calculations exclude people who were on an elective surgery waiting list but were transferred to another hospital's elective surgery waiting list, were treated elsewhere but not on behalf of the hospital, were not contactable, died prior to receiving their surgery or declined surgery.

Median waiting times are reported for hospitals with 10 or more separations in the cohort.

Values are rounded down to the nearest whole number.

The waiting times are those experienced by people who have received their surgery and are not the waiting times for those patients who are waiting for surgery.

For this indicator malignant refers to those cancers that have the ability to progress to more serious disease and spread to surrounding tissue or other organs, if left untreated.

Representational attributes

Indicator conceptual framework

Data source attributes

Accountability attributes

Waiting times are calculated by jurisdictions by subtracting the listing date for care from the removal date, minus any days the patient was waiting with a less urgent clinical urgency category than their clinical urgency category at removal and any not ready for care days that occurred while the patient was listed with the urgency category at removal.

There are inconsistencies in application of urgency categories between and within states and territories which impact on the comparability of results.

Source and reference attributes

Relational attributes