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National Non-Admitted Patient Collection

The National Non-Admitted Patients Collection (NNPAC) information includes event-based purchase units that relate to medical and surgical outpatient events and emergency department events.

This includes information on the type of service provided and the health specialty involved.

NNPAC allows the Ministry of Health and DHBs to monitor outpatient activity and ensure that DHBs are appropriately remunerated for the services they provide.

Scope

Purpose

NNPAC provides national consistent data on non admitted patient (outpatient and emergency department) activity. Its primary use will be for the calculation of Inter District Flows (IDFs) but may also help provide information to measure health outcomes and inform decisions on funding allocations and policy.

Content

Transaction records containing details of the non admitted patient event including date, facility and type of service. All records must have a valid NHI number. Data is submitted electronically by DHBs in an agreed format.

Start date

NNPAC was implemented on 1 July 2006 and contains data from that date.

Guide for use

Data is loaded on a weekly basis and summarised monthly at the type of service (purchase unit) level.

A yearly snapshot of data is taken and used for the IDF process.

Collection methods – guide for providers

Data is provided by district health boards in an agreed electronic file format and must be sent at least once per month.

Frequency of updates

Electronic files are received and processed weekly by National Collections and Reporting.

Security of data

NNPAC is accessed by authorised National Collections and Reporting staff for maintenance, data quality, audit and analytical purposes.

Authorised members of the Ministry of Health have access to the data for analytical purposes, via the Business Objects reporting tool and the secure Health Information Network (HIN). Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the National Non-Admitted Patient Collection Data Mart (NNPAC DM).

Privacy issues

The Ministry of Health is required to ensure that the release of information recognises any legislation related to the privacy of health information, in particular the Official Information Act 1982, the Privacy Act 1993 and the Health Information Privacy Code 1994.

Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. Researchers requiring identifiable data will usually need approval from an Ethics Committee.

National reports and publications

Monthly standard reports for DHBs are available via the HIN.

Data provision

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from the Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

The Analytical Services team also offer a peer review service to ensure that national collections data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.

Contact

For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports email data-enquiries@moh.govt.nz.

Publications

Code table

Related areas

Page last updated: 17 April 2012