Frequency of hospital-onset injuries
Of the 94.5 million hospital separations from 2015–16 to 2024–25, there was a total of 1,465,209 separations (1.6%) for Injury, poisoning or certain other consequences of external causes that occurred during a hospital stay.
Two thirds of these (945,814, 65%) were for Complications of surgical and medical care or Sequelae of injuries, poisoning and of other consequences of external causes only (that is, without any other hospital-onset injury diagnosis recorded) and are not described further in this report.
The remaining third consisted of 519,395 separations where at least one hospital-onset injury diagnosis was recorded:
- The overall hospital-onset injury rate was 55 episodes per 10,000 separations (1 in 182 separations) and 18 per 10,000 bed days (1 in 556 days) (Figure 1).
- From 2015–16 to 2019–20, the hospital-onset injury rate fell from 64 to 50 per 10,000 separations and has remained stable up to 2024–25.
- The median number of injuries per episode was 1.0.
- 20% of separations had more than one injury diagnosis reported.
Figure 1: Hospital-onset injury hospitalisations, 2015–16 to 2024–25
Line graph showing hospital-onset injury hospitalisations per 10,000 separations from 2015–16 to 2024–25, illustrating a peak at 68 in 2016–17 followed by a decline to 50 in 2019–20 and remaining stable thereafter.
| Year | Rate per 10,000 separations |
|---|---|
| 2015-16 | 64 |
| 2016-17 | 68 |
| 2017-18 | 57 |
| 2018-19 | 57 |
| 2019-20 | 50 |
| 2020-21 | 50 |
| 2021-22 | 51 |
| 2022-23 | 50 |
| 2023-24 | 52 |
| 2024-25 | 53 |
- Hospital-onset injuries exclude diagnosis codes T80-T88 Complications of surgical and medical care and Y90-Y98 Sequelae of injuries, of poisoning and of other external causes.
- Analysis excludes care types 7.3, 9, 10, and separations for same day chemotherapy or haemodialysis
Downloadable data tables are available on Data . See Table S1.
Source:
AIHW analysis of the National Hospital Morbidity Database
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Data source overview