• Health, Superseded 07/02/2023

The scope of the Non-admitted patient emergency department care national minimum data set (NAPEDC NMDS) is patients registered for care in emergency departments in public hospitals where the emergency department meets the following criteria:

• purposely designed and equipped area with designated assessment, treatment and resuscitation areas
• ability to provide resuscitation, stabilisation and initial management of all emergencies
• availability of medical staff in the hospital 24 hours a day
• designated emergency department nursing staff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a designated emergency department nursing unit manager.

Patients who were dead on arrival are in scope if an emergency department clinician certified the death of the patient. Patients who leave the emergency department after being registered to receive care and then advised of alternative treatment options are in scope.

The scope includes only physical presentations to emergency departments. Advice provided by telephone or videoconferencing is not in scope, although it is recognised that advice received by telehealth may form part of the care provided to patients physically receiving care in the emergency department.

The care provided to patients in emergency departments is, in most instances, recognised as being provided to non-admitted patients. Patients being treated in emergency departments may subsequently become admitted (including admission in the emergency department, admission to another hospital ward, including a short stay unit, or admission to hospital-in-the-home). All patients remain in-scope for this collection until they are recorded as having physically departed the emergency department, regardless of whether they have been admitted. For this reason there is an overlap in the scope of this NMDS and the Admitted patient care national minimum data set (APC NMDS).

Excluded from the scope of the NMDS are:

• Care provided to patients in General Practitioner co-located units;
• Where only a clerical service is provided to people supporting a pre-arranged admission; and
• Where people are awaiting transit to another facility and receive no clinical care.

Emergency department stay

The definition of a 'short stay unit' is as per clause C48 of the National Health Reform Agreement—National Partnership Agreement on Improving Public Hospital Services (NPA IPHS), as follows:

a) Designated and designed for the short term treatment, observation, assessment and reassessment of patients initially triaged and assessed in the emergency department (ED);

b) Have specific admission and discharge criteria and policies;

c) Designed for short term stays no longer than 24 hours;

d) Physically separated from the ED acute assessment area;

e) Have a static number of beds with oxygen, suction, patient ablution facilities; and

f) Not a temporary ED overflow area nor used to keep patients solely awaiting an inpatient bed nor awaiting treatment in the ED.

Interaction with the Individual Healthcare Identifier national best endeavours data set (IHI NBEDS)

The NAPEDC NMDS and IHI NBEDS work together to enable the reporting of IHI data for emergency department episodes of care.

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.

State and territory health authorities provide the data to the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority for national collation, on a quarterly basis before the last working day of the end of the following reporting period.

The Institute and the Commonwealth Department of Health will agree on a data quality and timeliness protocol. Once cleaned, a copy of the data and a record of the changes made will be forwarded by the Institute to the Commonwealth Department of Health. A copy of the cleaned data for each jurisdiction should also be returned to that jurisdiction on request.

Periods for which data are collected and nationally collated

Quarterly and financial year. Extraction of data for each three months or year should be based on the date of the end of the emergency department stay. For example, a presentation that commences at 11pm on 31 December and ends at 2am 1 January is not in scope for reporting in the second quarter .

Scope links with other metadata sets

Episodes of care for admitted patients are reported through the Admitted patient care NMDS.

Mental health care provided in emergency departments is in scope for the NAPEDC NMDS.

The IHI NBEDS works with the NAPEDC NMDS to enable the reporting of the IHI for emergency department patients.

Glossary items

Glossary terms that are relevant to this National minimum data set include:

Admission

Compensable patient

Emergency department

Gender

Registered nurse

Sex

Triage

Independent Hospital Pricing Authority