The following are principles of the collection. Jurisdictions should consider these principles when providing data.

1. The NMDS should capture and differentiate between in-scope and out-of-scope of the National Health Reform Agreement.
2. The NMDS must specify where financial data elements are reporting actual data and where they are reporting estimated data.
3. Where possible, the NMDS should align so that it acts as a subset of the Government health expenditure NMDS.
4. Reporting on expenditure relating to contracted care requires less detail than other expenditure.
5. Where possible, the changes to the NMDS should maintain the ability to report time series data from previous years.

Expenditure and revenue data reported to the PHE NMDS should reconcile with published financial statements.

Expenditure data are reported in two ways:

• as it would appear in the general ledger line items (Establishment—recurrent non-salary expenditure, public hospital expenditure categories code N[N] and Establishment—staffing categories, health code N)
• by National Health Reform Agreement product streams (Establishment—total recurrent expenditure, National Health Reform Agreement 2011 product streams code N[N]). These are estimated data.

The total expenditure by product stream should equal the total expenditure by general ledger line item.

For the purposes of the PHE NMDS, funding from the Commonwealth, National Health Funding Body, state and territory health authorities and other state and territory government departments is considered to be revenue and should be reported as such.

Some data for this NMDS are sourced from the state or territory health authority general ledger. Some other data are maintained at the LHN or hospital and are forwarded to the relevant state or territory health authority for inclusion.

National reporting arrangements

State and territory health authorities provide the data to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare for national collation, on an annual basis.

Periods for which data are collected and nationally collated

Interaction with the Local Hospital Networks data set specification (LHN DSS)

The PHE NMDS and the Local Hospital Networks data set specification (LHN DSS) work together to collect data on the public hospital system. The two data set specifications collect the same expenditure and revenue data items, but at different levels of the system:

It is expected that expenditure and revenue data will be reported at the level at which they occur.

In addition to the shared expenditure and revenue data items, each collection has a number of unique items. The PHE NMDS includes items such as establishment location, establishment type and specialised service indicators that do not appear in the LHN DSS. Similarly, the LHN DSS includes gross and net capital expenditure items that do not appear in the PHE NMDS.

It is intended that once the LHN DSS is firmly established, the two collections should be merged into a single NMDS.

Scope links with other NMDSs

The PHE NMDS shares scope with other hospital NMDSs as well as other establishment and expenditure collections:

• Admitted patient care NMDS
• Admitted patient mental health care NMDS
• Admitted patient palliative care NMDS
• Alcohol and other drug treatment services NMDS
• Government health expenditure NMDS
• Mental health establishments NMDS
• Non-admitted patient care aggregated NMDS
• Non-admitted patient emergency department care NMDS