The Hospital Morbidity Data Collection is a database of information about all episodes of care for patients admitted to public and private hospitals in Western Australia.

The data collection is comprised of summary inpatient records since 1970, which is the data about patient visits to hospitals and wait list data since 1991 (data about people waiting for elective surgery). Inclusions are episodes of care in:
• Public acute hospitals;
• Public psychiatric hospitals;
• Private acute hospitals (licensed by the WA Health System);
• Private psychiatric hospitals (licensed by the WA Health System)
• Private day surgeries (licensed by the WA Health System).

Excludes episodes of care provided entirely in a non-admitted setting and residential aged care/flexible care.

This dataset is linked routinely. The time lag for finalised linked data available for researchers is approximately 6 months.

The HMDS provides WA health system with the necessary information for planning, allocating and evaluating health services within Western Australia.

Western Australia state data

In accordance with the National Health Information Agreement, the WA health system, as are all State and Territories, is mandated to provide an annual submission to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare of all admitted activity information for the State. In turn, under the Health Services Act 2016, the WA health system mandates all health service providers to submit complete, accurate and timely admitted activity data to the HMDS in accordance with agreed data management protocols.