Study scope
The study focused on transitions of care before and after each person’s first hospitalisation ending in 2017. This includes hospital admissions that commenced in 2017 (or earlier) that resulted in discharge or death in 2017. For people who had more than one hospitalisation ending in 2017, the first hospitalisation is the one that occurred earliest in the year. People who had been hospitalised prior to 2017 were eligible for the study.
The year 2017 was chosen because it was the latest year in the data which still allowed for 12-month outcomes to be examined.
In total, 705,000 people (including nearly 79,000 people living with dementia) were included in the study.
People were included in the study if they:
- were aged 65 or over in 2017
- had one or more hospitalisations in 2017
- lived in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, or Australian Capital Territory from 1 January 2017 until 31 December 2018, or until death. These jurisdictions were selected as complete public hospitals data was available in the linked data. People were classified as living in these jurisdictions where all of their events in the linked data during this period were in these jurisdictions.
- had complete key information of interest, such as age and sex.
People’s usual residence on the day of their admission to hospital and within 7-days, 3-months and 12-months of discharge was determined using the Residential Aged Care activity data (see Data Sources). Within each period of interest:
- People with a record in the National Death Index were categorised as having died.
- People with a record in the Residential Aged Care Activity data were categorised as living in aged care.
- People who did not have a death record and did not have any residential aged care activity were categorised as living in the community.