National Non-Admitted Patient Collection
Information includes event-based purchase units that relate to medical and surgical outpatient events and emergency department events.
Pātiki and Waharua Kōpito patterns
For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports email data-enquiries@health.govt.nz.
National Non-Admitted Patient Collection
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.
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 everyday 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).
Please note, Business Objects is currently being decommissioned.
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 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.
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.