Comparable Cost of Care is derived from the National Hospital Cost Data Collection Round 16 (2011-12). This collection is managed by the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority. The full dataset specification can be found at http://www.ihpa.gov.au/internet/ihpa/publishing.nsf/Content/nat-hosp-cost-data-
collection-round-16

Hospital admissions are in-scope for Comparable Cost of Care and Total 'units of activity' if:

• The patient is classified as an acute admission
• The patient was admitted and discharged within the 2011-12 financial year
• The patient has a non-error AR-DRG 6.x

Comparable Costs are derived from the National Hospital Data Collection (NHCDC) Round 16 (2011-12). Admitted patient costs are attributed to cost buckets based on the type of cost incurred, including whether it is deemed to be a 'direct' cost or an 'overhead' cost.

The following costs are in-scope for Comparable Cost of Care:

The following patients (funding sources) are in-scope for Comparable Cost of Care:

• Australian Healthcare agreement
• Private Health Insurance
• Self-funded
• Workers compensations
• Motor vehicle accident insurance
• Other compensation
• Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA)
• Department of Defence
• Correctional facility
• Other hospital or public authority Reciprocal HCA
• Other
• No charge raised
• Unknown 

Emergency Department costs

For patients that are admitted to the hospital through the Emergency Department (ED), the costs incurred during the patients stay in the ED have been added to the costs incurred during the patient's admission.

Private Patients

In some instances, private patient costs may not be fully recorded in the hospital's general ledger and subsequently not be accounted for in the NHCDC. To improve the comparability of hospitals with differing private and public patient casemixes, Comparable Cost of Care inflates the costs submitted to the NHCDC based on a hospitals percentage of private patients. This approach models the percentage of private patient costs that are not reported in the general ledger based on analysis of the Hospital Casemix Protocol dataset.

Indicator: National Health Performance Authority, Hospital Performance: Total 'units of activity', 2011-12.

Total 'units of activity' measures the weighted activity units that are in-scope for the Comparable Cost of Care indicator. To enable fair comparisons, admitted patients are weighted based on the complexity of the patient as well as other patient specific cost drivers.

For the specification for this indicator see;

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