Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Patient Costing Study

1.1Findings

1.1.1Acute encounters

417The representation of CALD patients who were treated for a mental health condition, who identified as non-indigenous was very low relative to total sample site encounters. Across NSW, QLD and SA, these encounters made up less than 1%. The data supplied by Victoria did not contain the fields required to perform this analysis (the data did not contain the MDC field or the number of psychiatric care days).

418The key group encounters represent less than 1% of the total encounters in each of the states, and therefore no further analysis was done on any cost differential between this group and the overall sample.

Description of analysis performed	NSW (PL)	QLD (PL)	SA (FS)
Key group encounters	2,251	248	55
Total sample site encounters	1,355,275	166,019	40,496
Key group encounters as a % of total sample site encounters	0.17%	0.15%	0.14%

419

1.1.1Emergency Department encounters

420NSW provided ED encounters with two CALD patient indicators, ‘Preferred Language’ and ‘Interpreter Required’, while the ED data supplied by Victoria did not contain the fields required to perform this analysis

421In NSW, the proportion of encounters that met the “key group” criteria was very low relative to the total encounters of the respective sample sites. There were no encounters that met the criteria for the sites submitted by VIC.

422The key group encounters represent less than 1% of the total encounters in NSW, and therefore no further analysis was done on any cost differential between this group and the overall sample.

Description of analysis performed	NSW (PL)	NSW (IR)
Key group encounters	1,265	406
Total sample site encounters	1,806,436	1,806,732
Key group encounters as a % of total sample site encounters	0.07%	0.02%

423

1.1.1Outpatient encounters

424Victoria was the only jurisdiction to provide outpatient encounters for analysis in this CALD patient costing study. The proportion of encounters that met the “key group” criteria represent approximately 0.04% of total encounters for the sample site.

425The key group encounters represent less than 1% of the total encounters in Victoria, and therefore no further analysis was done on any cost differential between this group and the overall sample.

Description of analysis performed	VIC (IR)
Key group encounters	63
Total sample site encounters	280,538
Key group encounters as a % of total sample site encounters	0.02%

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2Appendices

Appendix A: Glossary

Appendix B: Consultation attendees and survey respondents

Appendix C: Submissions to the Pricing Framework 2014-15 and 2015-16

Appendix D: Literature Review Searches

Appendix E: Literature review sources

Appendix F: CALD data items collected for mental health

Appendix G: Data summary and analysis assumptions

1. Glossary

Acronym/abbreviation	Description
AHPCS	Australian Hospital Patient Costing Standards
AIHW	Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
AR-DRG	Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups
ATSI	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
CALD	Culturally and Linguistically Diverse
CCU	Critical Care Unit
Cost bucket	An NHCDC/other defined group of costs used for reporting.
DH	Department of Health
ED	Emergency Department
Encounter	Unique occurrence of a patient record on hospital system (also known as a separation)
FS	First spoken language
ICU	Intensive Care Unit
IHPA	Independent Hospital Pricing Authority
IR	Interpreter required
LEP	Low English Proficiency
LHN	Local Health Network
LOS	Length of stay
NEP	National Efficient Price
NESB	Non-English speaking background
NHCDC	National Hospital Cost Data Collection
NWAU	National Weighted Activity Unit
PAS	Patient Administration System
PL	Preferred language
PwC	PricewaterhouseCoopers
Triage	The process of sorting emergency patients into categories of priority for treatment. Patients presenting to emergency departments are rated on a Triage scale of 1 to 5, with patients at triage category 1 being the most urgent to be seen.
VCDC	Victoria Cost Data Collection

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2.