Emergency Care Costing and Classification Project Cost Report

The Independent Hospital Pricing Authority (IHPA) developed a new classification system for emergency care services for Australia, for the purposes of activity based funding. The project is referred to as the Emergency Care Costing and Classification Project, and was undertaken by a consortium led by Health Policy Analysis.

The objectives of the project were to:

1. Undertake a targeted prospective costing study to further investigate the impact of drivers of cost in providing emergency care at the patient level, and thereby aid in the development of a new emergency care classification system.
2. Develop a new classification system for emergency care services for activity based funding purposes, based on a structure agreed by IHPA. This will include data specification for new data elements introduced in relation to the proposed classification system.