This page presents information on the number and characteristics of dementia-related episodes of admitted patient care (referred to as ‘hospitalisations’) from the National Hospital Morbidity Database, including hospitalisations due to dementia in 2020–21 by:
Each hospitalisation is assigned a principal diagnosis (the main reason for being admitted to hospital) and can also be assigned 1 or more additional diagnoses (conditions that impact the provision of care but are not the main reason for being admitted to hospital). This page largely focuses on hospitalisations with a principal diagnosis of dementia, or ‘hospitalisations due to dementia’. See Hospitalisations due to dementia versus hospitalisations with dementia for information on hospitalisations with dementia recorded as an additional diagnosis.
See Box 9.1 for key terms and considerations for hospitalisations for people with dementia and the Technical notes for further information on hospitals data.
Box 9.1: Data considerations for hospitalisations related to dementia
This page aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the impact of dementia on Australia’s hospital systems. Hospitalisations where dementia was recorded as the principal diagnosis provide information on dementia-specific hospitalisations. In contrast, hospitalisations with dementia recorded as an additional diagnosis provide information on episodes of care where dementia impacted the hospitalisation but the reason for needing hospital care was not dementia.
The following terms are used to distinguish dementia hospitalisations:
- Hospitalisations due to dementia are hospitalisations where dementia was recorded as a principal diagnosis.
- Hospitalisations with dementia are hospitalisations where dementia was recorded as a principal diagnosis and/or an additional diagnosis.
It is important to note that the statistics presented here cannot be considered a full count of hospitalisations among people with dementia for various reasons including:
- Hospital records only include conditions that were significant in terms of treatment, investigations needed and resources used during the ‘episode of care’. This means that hospitalisations among people with mild dementia may be under-recorded because the early stages of dementia are less likely to affect the care provided in hospitals.
- Since 2015 dementia may be recorded in hospitals data using ‘supplementary codes’ rather than as an additional diagnosis (especially when dementia was not strongly impacting the care received by the patient) (see Box 9.3 for more information). Unfortunately, supplementary codes are currently not available in our data.
There is also a possibility that specific dementia types may be misclassified or simply attributed to Unspecified dementia by medical professionals in the hospital setting (Crowther et al. 2017). As a result, the number of hospitalisations for a specific dementia type may not be accurate. The most reliable data are likely to be for the most common types of dementia. Caution should be taken when interpreting hospital statistics by dementia type.
In 2020–21, there were just over 11.8 million hospitalisations in Australia. Of these, about 25,500 were hospitalisations due to dementia, which is equivalent to 2 out of every 1,000 hospitalisations in Australia.
Table 9.1 shows that of the hospitalisations due to dementia in 2020–21:
- there were more hospitalisations for men than women (13,100 hospitalisations compared to 12,400 hospitalisations)
- men also had a higher age-standardised rate of hospitalisations than women (51 hospitalisations for men and 37 hospitalisations for women, per 10,000 people aged 60 and over)
- the average length of stay was 13 days—this was 5 times higher than the average length of stay of 2.6 days for all hospitalisations
- the average length of stay was longer for men (13 days) than women (12 days).
Table 9.1: Overview of hospitalisations due to dementia in 2020–21 by sex
|
Men
|
Women
|
Persons
|
Number of hospitalisations
|
13,100
|
12,400
|
25,500
|
Age-standardised rate (number per 10,000)
|
51
|
37
|
43
|
Average length of stay, days per hospitalisation
|
13
|
12
|
13
|
Total number of bed days
|
175,500
|
149,500
|
325,000
|
Note: Age-standardised rates, which apply to people aged 60 and over, were standardised to the Australian population as at 30 June 2001 and are expressed per 10,000 population.
Source: AIHW analysis of National Hospital Morbidity Database.
With increasing age, hospitalisations due to dementia increased in number but decreased in length
There were distinct patterns in hospitalisations due to dementia in 2020–21 by age and sex (Figure 9.1):
- the number of hospitalisations for both men and women increased with age up to 80–84 years, then decreased in the oldest ages
- the rate of hospitalisations increased for both men and women up to age 90–94, before decreasing among those aged 95 and over
- people with younger onset dementia (aged under 65) had a greater average length of stay (22 days) than older people—the average length of stay decreased with increasing age, to 10 days for people hospitalised due to dementia aged 95 and over. This trend was observed among both men and women.