National Health Performance Authority, Hospital Performance: Percentage of patients who received their surgery within clinically recommended times, 2015

The percentage of patients who received surgery within the clinically recommended time. 

Waiting times are calculated for patients whose reason for removal was:

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

For the purposes of reporting, patients are reported as the final urgency category recorded when they were removed from the list.

Exclusions

The calculation of waiting time excludes:

1. All days the patient was waiting with a less urgent surgery urgency category than their urgency category when removed from the list. When a patient's urgency category changes, existing NMDS business rules will apply.
2. All patients who:
   • Transferred to another hospital’s elective surgery waiting list
   • Were treated elsewhere but not on behalf of the hospital
   • Were not contactable for booking the surgery or at booked time of surgery
   • Died prior to surgery
   • Declined surgery.

Data suppression

Results are not shown if the number of surgeries is fewer than 10.

If one or more quarter is suppressed then the next smallest quarter will be suppressed; annual totals are reported including all suppressed values.  

Annual data are sourced from National Elective Surgery Waiting Time Data Collection and quarterly data from National Elective Surgery Target Data Collection.

100 x (Numerator ÷ Denominator)

Hospital and elective surgery urgency category

Waiting time is calculated by states and territories by subtracting the listing date for care from the removal date, minus any days the patient was not ready for care and/or waiting with a less urgent clinical urgency category than their clinical 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.