- Strategic issue - Service Access, Coordination and Continuity of Care.
- Rationale - Readmission rate is considered a global performance measure, as it potentially points to deficiencies in the functioning of the overall care system. Admissions to a psychiatric facility following a recent discharge may indicate that inpatient treatment was either incomplete or ineffective, or that follow-up care was inadequate to maintain the person out of hospital.
- Endorsement status - Endorsed by AHMAC Mental Health Standing Committee, February 2011.
- Date last updated - January 2011.
National Mental Health Performance Framework
Data collection details
Indicator details
- Description - Percentage of in-scope overnight separations from the mental health service organisation's acute psychiatric inpatient units that are followed by a readmission to the same or to another public sector psychiatric inpatient unit within 28 days of discharge.
- Numerator - Number of in-scope overnight separations from the mental health service organisation's acute psychiatric inpatient unit(s) occurring within the reference period, that are followed by a readmission to the same or another acute psychiatric inpatient unit within 28 days.
- Denominator - Number of in-scope overnight separations from the mental health service organisation's acute psychiatric inpatient unit(s) occurring within the reference period.
- Computation - (Numerator ÷ Denominator) x 100.
Calculated separately for public, private and MBS-funded services.
- Calculation conditions
- Coverage/Scope - All public mental health service organisations acute psychiatric inpatient units.
The following separations are excluded:
- Same day separations, including index separation and subsequent readmission.
- Statistical and change of care type separations.
- Separations that end by transfer to another acute or psychiatric inpatient hospital.
- Separations that end by death, left against medical advice/ discharge at own risk.Separations, where purpose of admission was for maintenance ECT and length of stay is one night only.
- Same day separations, including index separation and subsequent readmission.
- Methodology - Readmission is considered to have occurred if the person has been admitted to any public sector mental health acute inpatient unit within the state/territory. As such a state-wide unique patient identifier is required for full implementation of this indicator.
Where a mental health service organisation has more than one unit of a particular service type for the purpose of this indicator those units should be combined.
- Coverage/Scope - All public mental health service organisations acute psychiatric inpatient units.
- Definitions
- 'Same day separations' are inpatient episodes where the admission and separation dates are the same.
- 'Same or another acute psychiatric inpatient unit' for the purposes of this indicator 'another' means within the same jurisdiction..
- 'Same day separations' are inpatient episodes where the admission and separation dates are the same.
- Presentation - Percentage.
- Disaggregation - State/Territory and age.
- Notes
- This indicator cannot differentiate between 'planned' and 'unplanned' readmissions.
- This indicator will not track readmissions across state/territory boundaries or track movement between public and private hospitals.
- This indicator cannot differentiate between 'planned' and 'unplanned' readmissions.
- Is specification interim or long-term? - Long-term.
- Reported in:
- COAG National Action Plan Progress Report (Indicator 8 Readmission to hospital within 28 days of discharge).
- Report on Government Services.
- COAG National Action Plan Progress Report (Indicator 8 Readmission to hospital within 28 days of discharge).
National Mental Health Performance Framework
- Tier - Tier III - Health System Performance.
- Primary domain - Effective.
- Secondary domain(s) - Continuous.
- Mental health sub-domain - Community tenure.
- Type of measure - Outcome.
- Level at which indicator can be useful for benchmarking
- Service Unit.
- Regional group of services.
- Mental Health Service Organisation.
- State/Territory.
- Related performance indicators and performance benchmarks
- Rates of pre-admission community care.
- Rates of post-discharge community care.
Data collection details
- Data source(s)
- Numerator - State/territory admitted patient data.
- Denominator - State/territory admitted patient data.
- Data source(s) type
- Numerator - Administrative.
- Denominator - Administrative.
- Frequency of data source(s) collection
- Numerator - Annually.
- Denominator - Annually.
- Data development
- Long-term - Data linkage may allow identification of readmission between jurisdictions, and between public and private hospitals.