• Health, Superseded 05/10/2016

The scope of the Elective surgery waiting times data element cluster is patients on elective surgery waiting lists managed by public acute hospitals, in either category 1 or 2 of the Reason for removals from elective surgery waiting list data element.

This will include private patients treated in public hospitals, and may include public patients treated in private hospitals.

Hospitals may also collect information for other care (as defined in the Elective care type data element), but this is not part of the national minimum data set (NMDS) for Elective surgery waiting times (removals data).

Patients on waiting lists managed by hospitals operated by the Australian Defence Force, corrections authorities and Australia's external territories are not currently included.

Outsourced or contracted patients

Public hospitals managing elective surgery waiting lists may either outsource elective surgery work to another hospital (public or private) or contract another hospital (public or private) to provide elective surgery on their behalf.

In such cases, the hospital where the outsourced or contracted elective surgery occurs is required to include the Establishment—organisation identifier (Australian), NNX[X]NNNNN data element for the hospital managing the elective surgery waiting list as part of the Elective surgery waiting times data cluster.

National Health Information Standards and Statistics Committee