National Health Performance Authority, Hospital Performance: Percentage of people who received surgery for malignant cancer within 30 days, 2012-13

The percentage of hospital separations involving urgent or semi-urgent surgery for malignant bowel, breast or lung cancer for people who:

• were on an elective surgery waiting list for that surgery and
• received their surgery within 30 days of placement on an elective surgery waiting list.

100 x (numerator ÷ denominator)

Number of hospital separations involving urgent or semi-urgent surgery for malignant bowel, breast or lung cancer for people who:

• were on an elective surgery waiting list for that surgery and
• received their surgery within 30 days of placement on an elective surgery waiting list.

 Calculated using separations for patients 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 surgery or declined surgery.

Number of hospital separations involving urgent or semi-urgent surgery for malignant bowel, breast or lung cancer for people who were on an elective surgery waiting list for that surgery.

Calculated using hospital separations as per the numerator.

Hospital and cancer type (principal diagnosis)

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.

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.