Assessing the hospital costs related to admission with any indication of illicit drug or alcohol use

NDARC Staff

Louisa Degenhardt, Marian Shanahan, Steve Riddell and Amanda Roxburgh

Aims

To build on the existing work of the National Illicit Drug Indicators Project, this project examined the cost trends of hospital separations where an illicit drug was recorded. These trends were examined by drug type, across time, disease category as well as other characteristics such as age, gender and hospital type.

Design and Method

This project used data from the National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD) for the years 1999/2000 to 2004/05 and used the Australian Refined Diagnostic Related Groups (AR-DRG) and their associated Cost Weights to assess cost trends for cases where there was an indication of illicit drug use. Methods such as aetiological fractions were used to estimate the proportion of each separation which was directly attributable to an illicit drug.

Progress

Benefits

The results from this current study will be useful in improving our understanding of both the cost implications to the health care system from the use different types of illicit drugs and alcohol, and the extent to which variations in the use of illicit drugs and alcohol over time impact upon the use of hospital resources.

Output

Two papers have been submitted for publication

Funding

Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing