The type of establishment (defined in terms of legislative approval, service provided and patients treated) for each separately administered establishment.

Residential establishments are considered to be separately administered if managed as an independent unit in terms of financial, budgetary and activity statistics. The situation where establishment-level data, say for components of an area health service, were not available separately at a central authority was not grounds for treating such a group of establishments as a single establishment unless such data were not available at any level in the health care system.

Non-residential health services are classified in terms of separately administered organisations rather than in terms of the number of sites at which care is delivered. Thus, domiciliary nursing services would be counted in terms of the number of administered entities employing nursing staff rather than in terms of the number of clinic locations used by the staff.

Establishments can cater for a number of activities and in some cases separate staff and financial details are not available for each activity. In the cases it is necessary to classify the establishment according to its predominant residential activity (measured by costs) and to allocate all the staff and finances to that activity. Where non-residential services only are provided at one establishment, that establishment is classified according to the predominant non-residential activity (in terms of costs).