National Weighted Activity Unit (NWAU)

see also:

• funding of Emergency Departments in Australia
• Urgency Related Groups (URGs)
• Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRGs)
• Weighted Inlier Equivalent Separation (WIES)

• Australian Government's new case mix hospital funding model
• NWAU is very similar to Weighted Inlier Equivalent Separation (WIES)

• see Urgency Related Groups (URGs)

• Establishment ID
• Age at admission
• Indigenous status
• Postcode of usual residence
• Area of usual residence (SLA)
• Care type
• Funding source for hospital patient
• Admitted patient election status
• AR-DRG v6.x
• Same day patient flag
• No. qualified days for newborns
• Length of stay (minus leave days)
• Eligible ICU hours

• NWAU Base is the weight adjusted for patient LOS for a given DRG (from Price Weight table)
  • Same day NWAU
  • Short stay outlier MWAU base
    • total short stay outlier base NWAU = Short stay outlier MWAU base + Short stay outlier NWAU per diem x LOS
  • Inlier NWAU
  • Long stay outlier per diem
    • NWAU base = Inlier NWAU + excess LOS x Long stay outlier per diem

• age < 16yrs in designated hospitals and DRG not in neonatal section

• 5-24.4% adjustment factor depending upon combination

• if DRG not in neonatal section, and not identified as “bundled ICU” in DRG, and patient spent time in a desgnated ICU
• LOS in ICU is removed from the episode LOS
• adjustment is 0.0394 NWAU per hour in specified ICU

• based on Price Weight table eg. may apply a 73% factor to reduce the NWAU

• this is around 0.05 NWAU for same day and 0.07 NWAU per night which are subtracted from the NWAU value

• identified by patient election or funding source

• NWAU x NEP (currently the NEP = $4808 per NWAU)