Hospital care

This section presents information on the number and characteristics of dementia-related episodes of admitted patient care (referred to as ‘hospitalisations’) between 2012–13 and 2021–22 from the National Hospital Morbidity Database. See the Technical notes for further information on hospitals data. 

Each hospitalisation is assigned a principal diagnosis (the main reason for being admitted to hospital) and can also be assigned one or more additional diagnoses (conditions that impact the provision of care but are not the main reason for being admitted to hospital). Unless otherwise stated, this section focuses on hospitalisations with a principal diagnosis of dementia, or ‘hospitalisations due to dementia’. See Box 9.1 for key terms and considerations for hospitalisations for people with dementia.

Box 9.1: Data considerations for hospitalisations related to dementia

This section aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the impact of dementia on Australia’s hospital systems. 

The following terms are used to distinguish dementia hospitalisations: 

Hospitalisations due to dementia are hospitalisations where dementia was recorded as a principal diagnosis (the main reason for admission).

Hospitalisations with dementia are hospitalisations where dementia was recorded as a principal diagnosis and/or an additional diagnosis (where dementia impacted the hospitalisation but was not the main reason for admission), or where dementia was recorded as a ‘supplementary code’ (when dementia is identified as a chronic condition that is part of a patient’s current health status).

It is important to note that the statistics presented here cannot be considered a full count of hospitalisations among people with dementia for various reasons including:

  • Hospital records only include conditions that were significant in terms of treatment, investigations needed and resources used during the ‘episode of care’, or when chronic conditions that are part of a patient’s current health status are identified but don’t meet the inclusion criteria as a principal or additional diagnosis. This means that hospitalisations among people with mild dementia may be under-recorded because the early stages of dementia are less likely to affect the care provided in hospitals, or dementia may not be identified as a chronic condition that is part of a patient’s current health status.

Further, specific dementia types may be misclassified or simply attributed to Unspecified dementia by medical professionals in the hospital setting (Crowther et al. 2017). As a result, the number of hospitalisations for a specific dementia type may not be accurate. The most reliable data are likely to be for the most common types of dementia. Caution should be taken when interpreting hospital statistics by dementia type. 

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