Data source

National Hospital Morbidity Database

The National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD) is the primary data source used for this web report with data available up to 2016–17. The NHMD contains episode-level records from admitted patient data collection systems in Australian public and private hospitals and include administrative, demographic and clinical data. The NHMD captures virtually all births in Australia, with 97% of babies born in a hospital (AIHW 2019), and allows the calculation of a national estimate of gestational diabetes incidence. Individual women cannot be identified in the NHMD.

Note

  • Direct age-standardisation was used in this report to remove the influence of differences in age structure from the analysis.
  • Diagnosis of gestational diabetes, coded on hospital records, may include women with other forms of diabetes, detected for the first time in pregnancy.

Refer to the Methods section for further detail.

References

AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) 2019. Australia’s mothers and babies 2017—in brief. Perinatal statistics series no. 35. Cat. no. PER 100. Canberra: AIHW.