Public hospital establishments NMDS 2016–17

Identifying and definitional attributes

• Health, Superseded 03/11/2016

The scope of the Public hospital establishments national minimum data set (PHE NMDS) is establishment-level data for public acute and psychiatric hospitals, and alcohol and drug treatment centres.

Similar data for private hospitals and free-standing day hospital facilities are collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the Private Health Establishments Collection.

Hospitals specialising in dental, ophthalmic aids and other specialised acute medical or surgical care are included. Hospitals operated by the Australian Defence Force, corrections authorities and Australia's external territories are not currently included.

Collection and usage attributes

Public hospital establishment

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

1. The PHE NMDS should capture and differentiate between in-scope and out-of-scope of the National Health Reform Agreement.
2. The PHE NMDS must specify where financial data elements are reporting actual data and where they are reporting estimated data.
3. Where possible, the PHE NMDS should align with the Government health expenditure NMDS (GHE NMDS), so it is able to function as a subset of the GHE NMDS if required.
4. Reporting on expenditure relating to contracted care requires less detail than other expenditure.
5. Where possible, the changes to the PHE 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[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, 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 Local Hospital Network (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

Financial years ending 30 June each year.

Interaction with the Local Hospital Networks National Best Endeavours Data Set (LHN NBEDS)

Together the PHE NMDS and the LHN NBEDS define information 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 NBEDS. Similarly, the LHN NBEDS includes gross and net capital expenditure items that do not appear in the PHE NMDS.

It is intended that once the LHN NBEDS 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
• 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

As part of the rationalisation of national minimum data sets the Public hospital establishment address details data set specification merged with the PHE NMDS 2016–17.

Source and reference attributes

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Relational attributes