Hospitals
Injury hospitalisations
This section presents information on the number of hospitalisations with the principal diagnosis Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes for public and private hospitals in 2024–25.
Highlights
In 2024–25:
- about 1 in 15 (6.8%, 864,000) hospitalisations had a principal diagnosis of Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes. The majority (78%) were treated in public hospitals
- almost half (47%, or 405,000 hospitalisations) of all injury hospitalisations had a principal diagnosis of Injuries to upper and lower limbs, and 17% (146,000 hospitalisations) had a principal diagnosis of Complications of medical and surgical care
- 2 in 5 injury hospitalisations occurred as a result of Falls (39%, 335,000 hospitalisations)
- the rate of hospitalisation due to injury for First Nations people was 57.0 per 1,000 population, while the rate for other Australians was 31.9 per 1,000 population.
Changes over time
There were 15,800 more hospitalisations due to Injury in 2024–25 (864,000) compared with 2023–24 (849,000). Five years ago, in 2020–21, there were 841,000 hospitalisations due to Injury.
Data on injuries are available in Admitted patient care 2024–25: Why did people receive care? [XLSX 108kB]. These data are sourced from the National Hospital Morbidity database.
Data tables are available in the Data downloads section.
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
More information, appendices and caveat information are available in the About the data section.
For more information relating to hospitalisations for First Nations people, refer to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework.
External cause
An external cause is defined as the environmental event, circumstance or condition that was the cause of injury, poisoning or adverse event. Whenever a patient has a principal or additional diagnosis of an injury or poisoning, an external cause code should be recorded. External causes may also be required for other selected diagnoses. More than one external cause code may be reported for a separation, and the external causes presented may not relate to the principal diagnosis.
Injury and poisoning
Some hospitalisations for injury or poisoning may be considered potentially avoidable. It should be noted that the admitted patient care data provide only a partial picture of the overall burden of injury because the data do not include injuries that do not require admission to hospital: for example, that were not medically treated, were treated by general practitioners, or were treated in emergency departments (without being admitted).