Adverse events are defined as incidents in which harm resulted to a person receiving health care. They include infections, falls resulting in injuries, and problems with medication and medical devices. Some adverse events may be preventable.

The current measure for this indicator can be interpreted as representing selected adverse events in health care that have resulted in, or have affected, hospital admissions, rather than all adverse events that occurred in hospitals.

A hospital separation may be recorded against more than one adverse event category as some adverse events are reported as diagnoses and others as external causes or places of occurrence (of the injury or poisoning). Some of the adverse events may represent events that occurred before admission.

Analysis by state and territory is based on location of the service.

Presented as a number per 100 separations.

100 x (Numerator ÷ Denominator)

Number of hospital separations with an adverse event, where an adverse event is defined as follows (using ICD-10-AM 10th edition):

Total number of hospital separations

2018–19—National.

Nationally, by (all not reported):

• adverse event category
• Indigenous status
• remoteness (Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Remoteness Structure)
• Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage (IRSD) deciles.

State and territory (not reported).

State and territory, by (all not reported):

• adverse event category
• Indigenous status
• remoteness (ASGS Remoteness Structure)
• SEIFA IRSD quintiles.

Some disaggregations may result in numbers too small for publication.

Most recent data available for Australian Health Performance Framework: 2018–19.

From 2017–18 the specificity of Place of occurrence: Health service area has improved in that adverse events in the current or another health service area are now separately identifiable. Separations with an adverse event in both the current and another health service area are now counted as two separations with adverse events, and consequently the number and rates of separations with Place of occurrence: Health service area may have increased for 2017–18 and subsequent years compared with previous years.

The scope of the National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD) is episodes of care for admitted patients in essentially all hospitals in Australia, including public and private acute and psychiatric hospitals, free-standing day hospital facilities, alcohol and drug treatment hospitals and dental hospitals.

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Australian Health Performance Framework

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare