Information sources
Admitted patient mental health care is defined as specialised psychiatric care for patients admitted to stand-alone psychiatric hospitals and specialised psychiatric wards in general acute hospitals. Data on admitted patient mental health care are available in two categories, establishment-level and patient-level. Establishment-level data pertains to workforce, expenditure and activity characteristics of the service.
The patient-level data includes the patient's socio-demographic details, data on the diagnosis and information on the duration and nature of the stay in admitted care. The information sources for patient-level and establishment-level admitted patient data are outlined below.
Establishment-level information
Information about the characteristics of hospitals providing specialised mental health care are collected in the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) for Mental Health Establishments. This NMDS includes expenditure, workforce and activity data from admitted patient, ambulatory and residential mental health care services. These data have been collected since 1 July 2005, replacing the Community Mental Health Establishments NMDS and the National Survey of Mental Health Services . The latest establishment-level data for mental health care were published in Mental Health Services in Australia 2007-08 and also by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing in the annual series of National Mental Health Reports.
Patient-level information
The only national collection of patient-level data for admitted patient mental health services is the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) for Admitted Patient Mental Health Care. This data set has been collected since 1 July 1997. These data include patient demographics, clinical diagnosis items and service episode characteristics. The latest summary patient-level data were reported in Mental Health Services in Australia 2007-08 and are available online at National hospital morbidity database. The data cubes can be used to create customised tables based on the age group, sex and principle diagnosis of patients who received specialised psychiatric care or had mental-health related principal diagnoses.
Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing