Nurses' retention and hospital characteristics in New South Wales, CHERE Discussion Paper No 52

NURSES’ RETENTION AND HOSPITAL CHARACTERISTICS IN NEW SOUTH WALES

APPENDIX 3: GLOSSARY

Acute Care. Acute care is where the principal clinical intent is to do one or more of the following:
manage labour (obstetric); cure illness or provide definitive treatment of injury; perform surgery;
relieve symptoms of illness or injury (excluding palliative care); reduce severity of an illness or injury;
protect against exacerbation and/or complication of an illness and/or injury which could threaten life
or normal function; perform diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.

Acute Bed Days. The total number of bed days of inpatients who complete acute episodes of care
during the reporting period.

Acute Separation. A separation which includes at least one day when the patient was receiving acute
care as an admitted patient. If a patient underwent a type change separation from acute care to
another type of care, and subsequently another type change separation back to acute care without
leaving the hospital, that stay in hospital would result in two acute separations for that patient.

Admissions from Emergency. The number of separations of patients who are admitted via the
Emergency Department.

ANDRG. Australian National Diagnosis Related Groups (ANDRGs) are a classification system for
acute inpatient episodes of care. Each Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) represents a grouping of
episodes of care for inpatients with similar clinical characteristics (i.e. diagnoses and procedures)
and resources consumed.

ANDRG Weight. One of the most useful aspects of ANDRGs is the ability to determine the relative
resource requirements of patients across the different groups. This is achieved through the
development of cost weights. Cost weights describe the cost (and complexity) of patients within
particular ANDRGs as compared to the average for all ANDRGs, which is set at 1. Specifically, the
cost weight for a particular ANDRG is the ratio of the average cost of a period of inpatient care for all
patients in the group to the average cost of all ANDRGs .

Average Waiting Time (Months). The average of the actual waiting times for those patients admitted
during the year. It is calculated as:

(Time Waited by Patients, clinical urgency categories 1-3 admitted in 1996/97) /
(Total Patients, clinical urgency categories 1-3 admitted in 1996/97)

where:

Time Waited = (Date of Admission) - (Date of Listing) - (Days not ready for care)
And clinical categories are defined below.

Average Length of Stay. (ALOS) The average length of stay for all inpatients, less leave days and
excluding same day patients. Average lengths of stay computed from ISC data count all the bed days
accumulated by that patient at the time that the patient separates. ALOS is calculated as:
(Inpatient Bed Days - Same Day Separations)/
(Total Separations - Total Same Day Separations)

Bed Days. The total number of bed days of all inpatients who are separated during the year,
excluding leave days. Details for same day separations are also recorded as inpatient bed days where
one inpatient bed day is counted for each same day separation.

Clinical categories. These are as follows:

> Emergency emergency patients treated immediately

> Urgency 1 require hospitalisation within one week

> Urgency 2 require hospitalisation within one month

> Urgency 3 other ready for care

> Urgency 4 not ready for care - these patients are either “staged”, i.e. their medical condition is such
that they will not be ready for admission until some future date, or “deferred”, i.e. they are unable to
accept the next available date for admission for personal or social reasons.

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