Overview
The Institute compiles and reports on a range of data on hospitals, detailing the characteristics of public hospitals, non-admitted patient care, admitted patients and the care they receive in hospital, and elective surgery and emergency department waiting times.
The Institute takes active steps to improve the national consistency of these data over time.
Data quality
States and territories are primarily responsible for the quality of the data they provide. However, the AIHW undertakes extensive validations on receipt of data, and potential errors are queried with jurisdictions. Corrections and resubmissions may be made in response to these queries. Except as noted, the AIHW does not adjust data to account for possible data errors or missing or incorrect values.
It should be noted that the statistics presented in the AIHW reports based on these data may be updated online due to revisions to the underlying data provided by the states and territories.
Australian hospital statistics
Australian hospital statistics 2010–11 summarises the latest data on public hospitals, non-admitted patient care and admitted patients in public and private hospitals. It illustrates changes in hospital activity over time, including time series for individual states and territories, and some differences between hospitals in the public and private sectors.
For the first time, the 2010–11 report includes enhanced information on surgery in Australian hospitals, with detail provided for both emergency and elective admissions.
It also includes summary information on cases of Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (SAB) in public hospitals, an important indicator of the safety of hospital care. As for a number of other indicators, the SAB information reported here complement the hospital-level information on SAB reported on MyHospitals.
Australian hospital statistics 2011-12: emergency department care summarises the latest data relating to emergency department care in major public hospitals for the period 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012. This report includes corrected waiting times and length of stay information for about 12,000 records for the Australian Capital Territory that were submitted for the reporting periods 2008-09 to 2011-12.
Australian hospital statistics 2011-12: elective surgery waiting times summarises the latest date relating to elective surgery waiting times in public hospitals for the period 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012.
Australian hospital statistics 2010-11: Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia in Australian public hospitals presents the first annual report on hospital-associated Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia infections in public hospitals for the period 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2011.
Australia's hospitals at a glance
Australian hospital statistics 2010–11 is accompanied by a shorter companion report—Australia's hospitals 2010–11 at a glance. The companion report provides a summary of the detailed information presented in Australian hospital statistics 2010–11, in a form accessible to a general readership. This report can also be used as a companion to the MyHospitals website, presenting similar information for public hospitals at both the national and state/territory level.