This report is the first to allow meaningful comparisons of costs for acute admitted patients in public hospitals. Through innovative development work by the National Health Performance Authority, two measures have been used to assess the relative efficiency of Australia’s largest public hospitals: Cost per National Weighted Activity Unit (NWAU) and Comparable Cost of Care. These assess the overall relative efficiency of Australian public hospitals by reporting costs against units of activity, which allow different treatments and operations to be compared fairly.
This publication was originally published by the National Health Performance Authority, which transferred its activities to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on 1 July 2016.