Hospital activity provided under contract is to be reported by both the contracting (originating) hospital and by the contracted (destination) hospital, where the activity is recorded by both hospitals.

A specific arrangement should apply (either written or verbal) whereby one hospital contracts with another hospital for the provision of specific services. The arrangement may be between any combination of hospital; for example, public to public, public to private, private to private, or private to public.

This data element is designed to enable elimination of double counting of episodes of admitted patient care in national data compiled as per the Admitted patient care National Minimum Data Set. As such, contracted arrangements where the patient is only admitted to one hospital (i.e. contract type 4 where contract role=A) are not considered to be inter-hospital contracted care for the purposes of this data element. In contracted arrangements where the patient is admitted to both hospitals, provide data according to the guide for use below. In contracted arrangements where the patient is only admitted to one hospital, use code 5.

This data element item will be derived, using data elements Hospital—contract role, code A and Hospital—contract type, code N as follows.

If Contract role = B (Hospital B, that is, the provider of the hospital service; contracted hospital), and Contract type = 2, 3, or 5 (that is, a hospital (Hospital A) purchases the activity, rather than a health authority or other external purchaser, and admits the patient for all or part of the episode of care, and/or records the contracted activity within the patient's record for the episode of care). Then record a value of 1, if Hospital A is a public hospital or record a value of 2, if Hospital A is a private hospital.

If Contract role = A (Hospital A, that is, the hospital purchasing the activity; contracting hospital), and Contract type = 2, 3, or 5 (that is, the reporting hospital purchases the activity and admits the patient for all or part of the episode of care, and/or records the contracted activity within the patient's record for the episode of care). Then record a value of 3, if Hospital B is a public hospital or record a value of 4, if Hospital B is a private hospital.

All services provided at both the originating and destination hospitals should be recorded and reported by both hospitals. The destination hospital should record the admission as an 'Inter-hospital contracted patient' so that these services can be identified in the various statistics produced about hospital activity.