Deriving key patient variables: a technical paper for the Hospital Dementia Services Project

This report describes the methods used for the Hospital Dementia Services Project to derive dementia status, complete hospital stays and post-hospital destination using New South Wales hospital data for 2006-07. Comparisons of estimates using these key variables show that the method used to derive the variables can substantially affect analytical results on use of hospitals. This report demonstrates the importance of using analytical data and methods that match the particular policy or research question being asked.