S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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metropolitan hospitals. The rate of separations for remote and very remote areas was less than half of that for metropolitan areas.

Table 2.10 Admitted Patient Mental Health-Related Separations* with Specialist Psychiatric Care by Patient Demographic Characteristics, 2009 – 2010 (Source: AIHW, Mental Health Services in Australia database)

Location

Major Cities 96,237

Inner Regional Outer regional

Remote Very Remote

No. of separations (a) Percentage of separations (b) Rate of separation (per 1000 population)

21,771

8,159

987

503

75.4

17.1

6.4

0.8

0.4

6.3

5.3

4.1

3.1

2.9

(a) The number for each demographic may not sum to the total due to missing data. (b) Does not include those separations for which the demographic information was missing.

* Separation: Separation refers to an episode of care for an admitted patient, which can be a total hospital stay (from admission to discharge, transfer or death) or a portion of a hospital stay beginning or ending in a change of type of care (for example, from acute to rehabilitation). Separation also means the process by which an admitted patient completes an episode of care by being discharged, dying, transferring to another hospital or changing type of care. Separation data provide information on the number of hospital stays completed in a designated period, typically a financial year. These data can be used as a measure of hospital activity, but can represent quite different types of activity. That is, some separations will occur after same day stays in hospital, some for stays of a few days, while others can be for stays of months or, rarely, years. Thus, the separation data do not allow accurate comparison of hospitals that tend to provide for longer stays and report fewer separations (for example, public psychiatric hospitals) with hospitals that concentrate on providing numerous short stays (for example, acute care hospitals).