National Minimum Dataset — hospital events

The current NMDS was introduced in 1999.

The original NMDS was implemented in 1993 and backloaded with public hospital discharge information from 1988.

The NMDS has undergone many changes over the years. Some data subsets have been removed and are now held in separate collections, such as the:

• New Zealand Cancer Registry
• Mortality collection.

In other cases, extra fields have been included and events are reported in more detail than in the past. More details are in the NMDS (hospital events) data dictionary.

National Minimum Dataset (hospital events) data dictionary — Data dictionaries

Private hospital information is also stored in the NMDS.

Publicly funded events (primarily maternity and geriatric) and surgical events from some hospitals are up to date. Privately funded events may be delayed.

Data is provided by public and the larger private hospitals in an agreed electronic file format. A cut-down electronic file format is reported by other private hospitals.

Publicly funded hospital events must be loaded into the NMDS within 21 days after the month of discharge.

Electronic input files are received and processed almost every day by Health NZ. We have a team who process private hospital electronic discharge reports.

The NMDS is accessed by authorised Health NZ staff for the purposed of:

• maintenance
• data quality
• audit
• analytics.

Authorised staff have access to the NMDS for analytical purposes, using Qlik and other tools. 

We are required to make sure that the release of information meets the conditions of any legislation related to the privacy of health information. In particular the:

• Official Information Act 1982
• Privacy Act 2020
• Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. A data release policy covers approval where appropriate from a health ethics committee.

The national collections team publishes an annual report in a web tool. It has information on hospital discharges and procedures carried out in public and private hospitals.

The web tool provides information and statistics on publicly funded and privately funded hospitalisation data. It lets you:

• examine summarised data with interactive visualisations
• understand hospital discharges and procedures in relation to demographics in New Zealand.

Also provided in the web tool are detailed diagnoses and procedure tables for the latest year of data available. 

Hospital events web tool

Past publications are available on the Ministry of Health website.

Hospital event data and statistics — Ministry of Healthexternal link

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request. These can be electronic or on paper.

Our team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

We also offer a peer review service to make sure Health NZ data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.