National Healthcare Agreement: PI 20a-Waiting times for elective surgery: waiting time in days, 2015 QS
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 559107 |
Registration status: | Health!, Superseded 08/07/2016 |
Data quality | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Data quality statement summary: |
Table A.1: Admissions from waiting lists for elective surgery, by clinical urgency category, states and territories, 2012–13 (per cent)
Source: AIHW 2013. Australian hospital Statistics 2012–13: elective surgery waiting times. Health service series No.51. Cat. no. HSE 140. pp 40.
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia’s health and welfare. It is an independent corporate Commonwealth entity governed by a management board, and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health portfolio. The AIHW aims to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians through better health and welfare information and statistics. It collects and reports information on a wide range of topics and issues, ranging from health and welfare expenditure, hospitals, disease and injury, and mental health, to ageing, homelessness, disability and child protection. The Institute also plays a role in developing and maintaining national metadata standards. This work contributes to improving the quality and consistency of national health and welfare statistics. The Institute works closely with governments and non-government organisations to achieve greater adherence to these standards in administrative data collections to promote national consistency and comparability of data and reporting. One of the main functions of the AIHW is to work with the states and territories to improve the quality of administrative data and, where possible, to compile national datasets based on data from each jurisdiction, to analyse these datasets and disseminate information and statistics. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987, in conjunction with compliance to the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth), ensures that the data collections managed by the AIHW are kept securely and under the strictest conditions with respect to privacy and confidentiality. For further information see the AIHW website www.aihw.gov.au. Data for the NESWTDC were supplied to the AIHW by state and territory health authorities under the terms of the National Health Information Agreement (see the following links): The state and territory health authorities received these data from public hospitals. States and territories use these data for service planning, monitoring and internal and public reporting. Hospitals may be required to provide data to states and territories through a variety of administrative arrangements, contractual requirements or legislation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Timeliness: | The reference period for these data is 2012–13 and 2013–14. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Accessibility: | The AIHW provides a variety of products that draw upon the NESWTDC. Published products available on the AIHW website are the Australian hospital statistics suite of products with associated Excel tables. These products may be accessed on the AIHW website http://www.aihw.gov.au/hospitals/. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interpretability: | Metadata information for the Elective Surgery Waiting Times (ESWT) NMDS and the Admitted patient care NMDS is published in the AIHW’s online metadata repository, METeOR, and the National health data dictionary. The National health data dictionary can be accessed online at: /content/index.phtml/itemId/268110 The Data Quality Statement for the 2012–13 NESWTDC can be accessed on the AIHW website at: /content/index.phtml/itemId/543809 The Data Quality Statement for the 2012–13 NHMD can be accessed on the AIHW website at: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Relevance: | The purpose of the NMDS for Elective surgery waiting times (removals data) is to collect information about patients waiting for elective surgery in public hospitals. The scope of this NMDS is patients removed from waiting lists for elective surgery (as either an elective or emergency case) which are managed by public acute hospitals. This includes private patients treated in public hospitals and may include public patients treated in private hospitals. The purpose of the NMDS for Admitted patient care is to collect information about care provided to admitted patients in Australian hospitals. The scope of the NMDS 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. Hospitals operated by the Australian Defence Force, corrections authorities and in Australia's off-shore territories are not included. Hospitals specialising in ophthalmic aids and other specialised acute medical or surgical care are included. Analyses by remoteness and socioeconomic status are based on the Statistical Area level 2 of usual residence of the patient. The SEIFA categories for socioeconomic status represent approximately the same proportion of the national population, but do not necessarily represent that proportion of the population in each state or territory (each SEIFA decile or quintile represents 10 per cent and 20 per cent respectively of the national population). The SEIFA scores for each SA2 are derived from 2011 Census data and represent the attributes of the population in that SLA in 2011. Separations are reported by jurisdiction of hospitalisation, regardless of the jurisdiction of usual residence. Hence, data represent the waiting time for patients living in each remoteness area or SEIFA population group (regardless of their jurisdiction of residence) for the reporting jurisdiction. This is relevant if significant numbers of one jurisdiction’s residents are treated in another jurisdiction. Other Australians includes separations for non-Indigenous people and those for whom Indigenous status was not stated. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Accuracy: | For 2012–13 and 2013–14:
Interpretation of waiting times for jurisdictions should take into consideration cross-border flows, particularly for the Australian Capital Territory. States and territories are primarily responsible for the quality of the data they provide. However, the AIHW undertakes extensive validations on data. Data are checked for valid values, logical consistency and historical consistency. Where possible, data in individual datasets are checked against data from other datasets. Potential errors are queried with jurisdictions, and corrections and resubmissions may be made in response to these queries. The AIHW does not adjust data to account for possible data errors or missing or incorrect values. Cells have been suppressed to protect confidentiality where the presentation could identify a patient or a service provider or where rates are likely to be highly volatile, for example, where the denominator is very small. The following rules were applied:
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Coherence: | Caution should be exercised when comparing waiting times data between jurisdictions due to differences in the assignment of clinical urgency categories (see Australian hospital statistics 2012–13: elective surgery waiting times, Appendix A p 40 http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129544692). The data can be meaningfully compared across reference periods, except for the Indigenous disaggregation. Caution should be used in comparing data by peer groups across reference years, as the number of hospitals classified as peer group A or B, or the peer group of a hospital, may vary over time. Methodological variations also exist in the application of SEIFA to various data sets and performance indicators. Any comparisons of the SEIFA analysis for this indicator with other related SEIFA analysis should be undertaken with careful consideration of the methods used, in particular the SEIFA Census year, the SEIFA index used and the approach taken to derive quintiles and deciles. The information presented for this indicator is based on the same data as published in, Australian hospital statistics 2012–13,Australian hospital statistics: elective surgery waiting times (report series) and the National Healthcare Agreement: performance report 2012–13. The data reported for the 2012–13 and 2013–14 NEWSTDC are consistent with data reported for previous years for individual hospitals. In addition, some 2012–13 data reported previously in these publications are different from the equivalent data published here because the hospitals peer groups were based on 2011–12, rather than 2012–13 peer groups. Caution should be exercised when interpreting the 2013–14 data as potential revisions to the 2013–14 NESWTDC data could occur following linking to the 2013–14 NHMD. Analyses presented in Australian hospital statistics and previous National Healthcare Agreement performance reports may also differ slightly depending on whether the NESWTDC or linked NESWTDC/NHMD was used. National level data disaggregated by Indigenous status for 2007–08 included data from NSW, Qld, WA, SA and NT. National level data disaggregated by Indigenous status for 2008–09, 2009–10 and 2010–11 included data from NSW, Victoria, Qld, WA, SA and NT. National level data disaggregated by Indigenous status for 2011–12 and subsequent years includes data from all eight states and territories. Therefore, data disaggregated by Indigenous status from 2007–08 is not comparable to 2008–09, 2009–10 and 2010–11, and data for 2011–12 and subsequent years are not comparable with data for 2010–11 and prior years. When comparing data over time, linked data should not be compared with unlinked data. For example, the 2012–13 linked data supplied cannot be directly compared to the 2013–14 unlinked data supplied in this reporting cycle. In 2011, the ABS updated the Socio-Economic Indices for Areas (SEIFA), based on the 2011 ABS Census of Population and Housing. The new SEIFA will be referred to as SEIFA 2011, and the previous SEIFA as SEIFA 2006. Data for 2007-08 through to 2010-11 reported for SEIFA quintiles and deciles are reported using SEIFA 2006 at the Statistical Local Area (SLA) level. Data for 2011-12 are reported using SEIFA 2011 at the SLA level and data for 2012–13 are reported using SEIFA 2011 at the SA2 level. The AIHW considers the change from SEIFA 2006 to SEIFA 2011, and the change from SLA to SA2 to be series breaks when applied to data supplied for this indicator. Therefore, SEIFA data for 2010–11 and previous years are not directly comparable with SEIFA data for 2011–12, and SEIFA data for 2011–12 and previous years are not directly comparable with SEIFA data for 2012–13 and subsequent years. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Relational attributes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Related metadata references: | Supersedes National Healthcare Agreement: PI 20a-Waiting times for elective surgery: waiting time in days, 2014 QS Health!, Superseded 14/01/2015 Has been superseded by National Healthcare Agreement: PI 20a-Waiting times for elective surgery: waiting time in days, 2016 QS Health!, Superseded 31/01/2017 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indicators linked to this Data Quality statement: |