• Health, Superseded 26/03/2019
• Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, Standard 27/11/2017

A total of 136 Local Hospital Networks have been established across the states and territories. Of these, 122 are geographically based networks and 14 are state or territory-wide networks that may deliver specialised hospital services across some jurisdictions.

CODE 101   South Eastern Sydney

Includes Lord Howe Island.

Codes 217, 265, 272, 310 and 311 have been deleted from previous versions of the list of permissible values and are not to be reused.

For activity based funding purposes, a virtual Local Hospital Network identifier exists for each jurisdiction. Virtual Local Hospital Networks are entities that are only used for reporting services that are in-scope for activity based funding but which cannot be allocated to an established Local Hospital Network. The various virtual Local Hospital Network identifiers are intended to be primarily used to enable reconciliation of activity reported for funding purposes.

Some jurisdictions have their own local terminology for the areas and administrative units known nationally as Local Hospital Networks. For example, in New South Wales they are known as 'Local Health Districts', in Queensland they are known as 'Hospital and Health Services', in Western Australia they are known as Health Services, in South Australia they are known as 'Local Health Networks', and in Tasmania they are known as 'Tasmanian Health Organisations'.

LHNs 601, 602 and 603 ceased operation on 30 June 2015. LHN 604 commenced operation on 1 July 2015 (http://ths.tas.gov.au/) and subsumed all operations of the discontinued LHNs plus additional functions. Those functions expanded further through 2015-16 and 2016-17 as operational functions were transferred from the Department to the Tasmanian Health Service. Any data reported against LHNs 601, 602, 603 or 699 for 2015-16 or 2016-17 can be interpreted as if it had been reported against LHN 604.

More information about Local Hospital Networks is available through the Local Hospital Network portal on the Administrator National Health Funding Pool website.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Administrator National Health Funding Pool 2017. Local hospital network (LHN) directory. Viewed 22 August 2016, http://www.publichospitalfunding.gov.au/directory

A concatenation of:

Australian state/territory identifier (character position 1);

State/Territory-specific hospital network identifier (character positions 2-3).

The Local Hospital Network identifier should be able to distinguish between all public hospital administrative areas or units nationally.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare