Introduction

Hospital resources 2017–18: Australian hospital statistics presents information about public and private hospitals in Australia. It continues the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) series of Australian hospital statistics reports, which describe the characteristics, and activity of Australia’s hospitals.

This report presents an overview of public hospitals in 2017–18, covering funding of hospitals, recurrent expenditure, the number of full-time equivalent staff employed and the types of specialised services provided. It also describes public hospitals in terms of number and types of hospitals and availability of beds. Comparative information for the previous 4 reporting periods is included.

The report also presents selected information for private hospitals for 2016–17 and comparative information for the previous 4 reporting periods, sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Private hospitals Australiareport.

What data are reported?

Different data sources are used in this report for public hospitals, private hospitals and hospital funding:

  • For public hospitals, this report is based on data from the AIHW’s National Public Hospital Establishments Database (NPHED), which includes information for individual public hospitals, local hospital networks and for state/territory health authorities. More information about the NPHED is in Appendix A
  • For private hospitals, the information in this report is based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Private Health Establishments Collection 2016–17 (PHEC)
  • For hospital funding, the information in this report is sourced from the AIHW’s Health Expenditure Database 2016–17.