All hospitals and health services in Victoria that provide subacute care inpatient services are required to collect patient care data and report this information to the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED).

These subacute care areas (palliative care, rehabilitation, geriatric evaluation and management), had not previously been subject to audit, and AHA was appointed to conduct on-site pilot audits at three hospitals.  The pilot audits aimed to:

• Assess the validity of data underpinning the activity-based funding model for health services
• Validate a range of administrative data items reported to DHHS
• Assess the quality of health services’ record keeping and compliance with DHHS’s policies and expectations for information justifying allocation to care types
• Identify and trial the areas and criteria to be audited in future regular audits of admitted subacute data.

AHA’s pilot audits and report informed the development of an ongoing program of integrity audits of subacute care data.

AHA was subsequently appointed by DHHS to conduct the state-wide subacute care data audit program over two years.