National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC) Private Sector 2022-23 to 2024-25

The Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) (‘the customer’) is seeking a tender from private hospital groups (‘the supplier’) on the associated cost of undertaking a patient level costing study for their 2022-23, 2023-25 and 2024-25 financial and activity data.

IHACPA requires that the participating hospital or hospital group submit quality data that is in accordance with the Private Sector NHCDC Data Request Specification (DRS) for each financial year. Data submitted will include in-scope activity and associated costs, where in-scope activity relates to separations in the reference period for:

• admitted acute and newborn care

• subacute care

• mental health.

Costed data is to be submitted using Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRG) version 11.0.

The data request specifications for each year of the NHCDC Private Sector will be published on IHACPA’s website.

Service requirement

The hospital group must, for each financial year 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 of the NHCDC Private Sector:

1. assign a resource that will be considered the point of contact for all communications to address both technical and non technical issues

2. produce and submit in-scope cost and activity data by undertaking the three stages detailed below (i.e. data collection, costing and data submission).

Data collection is where the hospital group collects in-scope financial and activity data, which has been appropriately reviewed to identify and address any deficiencies, including file format, incomplete data, missing values, incorrect values, insufficient detail and duplicates.

Costing is where the hospital group produces episode level cost data (and associated activity data) by:

• applying the Australian Hospital Patient Costing Standards version 4.2

• building long term capacity within the organisation to undertake patient level costing.

Submission is where the Supplier submits data that is:

• Validated to confirm it is structured in accordance with the relevant Private Sector NHCDC data request specifications, which must pass a validation test (i.e., zero critical errors).

Note: the Customer will perform the validation tests and issue validation reports.

• Complete, where the activity submitted represents at least 90 per cent of the submitting hospital's total in-scope activity. Total in-scope activity is based on the Private Hospital Data Bureau collection in the relevant reporting year.

• Quality assured to confirm it is reasonable and reflective of actual costs, which must pass the Customer's Quality Assurance (QA) test by having no uncharacteristic traits or where present, the uncharacteristic traits are appropriately justified. QA tests are specified in the data request specifications.

Note: the Customer will perform the QA tests and issue QA reports.