133 Molesworth Street
PO Box 5013
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
T+64 4 496 2000
7 March 2022
Chris Johnston
By email: [FYI request #18177 email]
Ref:
H202201215
Tēnā koe Chris
Response to your request for official information
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) to the Ministry of
Health (the Ministry) on 4 February 2022 as a follow up to your original request H202117890.
You stated:
“
I understand that I requested the wrong code under the US coding scheme not the
Australian coding scheme”.
You then requested:
“Could you please adjust the OIA request above using the ICD-10-AM code T50.9
Poisoning by other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances.
I stil need the split by emergency, inpatient and outpatient as described above”.
The Ministry is releasing this to you in full in Appendix 1 attached to this response. Appendix 1
contains of the number of publicly funded hospital discharges from 2011/12 to 2020/21. This
data comes from the National Minimum Dataset (NMDS), which contains information on
hospitalisation events. These are reported to the Ministry after discharge.
Emergency Department (ED) attendances are reported to NNPAC (the National Non-admitted
Patients Collection). Diagnosis is not reported to the Ministry, so we are unable to provide that
information. If an ED attendance is over 3 hours, then the patient is considered admitted to
hospital and this event will be reported to NMDS. However, there is no field in NMDS which
indicates that the patient initially came in through ED, and then was admitted. If the patient was
discharged out of ED, the specialty code – which is recorded at discharge – would indicate that
they were in ED. If the patient was transferred to another speciality within the hospital, there is
no indication that they originally arrived via ED.
I trust this information fulfils your request. Under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to
ask the Ombudsman to review any decisions made under this request. The Ombudsman may
be contacted by email at:
[email address] or by calling 0800 802 602.
Yours sincerely
Gaynor Bradfield
Manager, Office of The Deputy-Director General
Data and Digital
