Median and 90th Percentile Transfer of Care Time From Ambulance to Emergency Department

Identifying Attributes

Care Settings
Care Transitions
Country
Australia
Publishing Organisation
New South Wales Health Bureau of Health Information: Healthcare Quarterly
Type of Quality Indicator
Process
IOM Quality Dimension
Timeliness
Domain
Access / Waiting Times

Defining Attributes

Definition

Median and 90th percentile transfer of care time from ambulance to Emergency Department.

Numerator

The time between arrival of patients at the Emergency Department by ambulance and transfer of responsibility for their care from paramedics to Emergency Department staff in an Emergency Department treatment zone for half and 90% of the patients.

Denominator

This is a continuous variable measure. The target population is people transferred from ambulance to Emergency Department (inferred).

Exclusions

Hospitals with fewer than 50 matched records in the quarter. Caution is advised when interpreting performance results for hospitals where transfer of care could not be calculated for more than 30% of total records because records were not matched or transfer of care time was missing.

Use of Risk Adjustment
No
Risk Adjustments
Stratifications

Data Attributes

Type of Data Collection
Administrative data
Data Collection Methods

Transfer of Care Reporting System portal, which incorporates data drawn from the NSW Ambulance information system and from the Emergency Department Data Collection (EDDC) extracted from the centralised data warehouse, the Health Information Exchange. Transfer of care is reported for hospitals where the ambulance incident number and the date can be identified in both the NSW Ambulance data and the EDDC.

Frequency of Data Collection
Continuous
Frequency of Data Collection in Days
1
Reporting Methods

Bureau of Health Information website: Healthcare Quarterly. This is a tier 1 KPI in the service agreements between the Ministry of Health and all local health districts and specialty health networks.

Reporting Frequency
Quarterly
Reporting Frequency in Days
91
Indicator Has Recommended Targets
Yes

Source and Reference Attributes

Technical Specifications

Bureau of Health Information. Technical Supplement to Healthcare Quarterly, January to March 2023. Sydney (NSW): BHI; 2023 www.bhi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdffile/0011/888140/BHIHQ52JAN-MAR2023TECHSUPP.pdf page 18

Link to Measurement Tools
Quality Indicator Confirmed to be Part of a Program Used to Monitor Quality and Safety of Care Among Older People at a Population-Level between 2012-2022
Yes
Assessed by the Australian Consortium for Aged Care Collaborators as Generally Containing Good Properties (Importance and Scientific Acceptability)
Yes
Australian Consortium for Aged Care Endorsed
No
Identified by PHARMA-Care Project
No
Upload Date
12 March 2025