National Booking Reporting System collection

Information by health specialty and booking status on how many patients are waiting for elective surgery, and how long they have had to wait.

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About the National Booking Reporting System (NBRS)

The NBRS system also consolidates information from the:

  • summary outpatient statistics
  • cost-weighted discharge information from the National Minimum Dataset (NMDS).

NBRS is mostly used to track waiting time for elective services.

Scope

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The NBRS provides information by health speciality and booking status on how:

  • many patients are waiting for treatment
  • long they have had to wait before receiving treatment.

The NBRS contains details of all booking status events involving a healthcare user who:

  • receives a priority for an elective medical or surgical service
  • is likely to receive publicly funded treatment.

Information is collected about the patient’s:

  • date of entry into the system
  • assessed priority
  • booking status.

Using this collection

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Hospitals have been required to report data since 1 August 2000.

Booking status information can be linked by unique event identifier (booking entry ID) to the actual procedure when it is done. Using this identifier, records in the NBRS may be linked to the NMDS, which contains data about inpatient and day patient events.

Refer to the following for more information.

National Booking Reporting System data dictionary — Data dictionaries

National Booking Reporting System (NBRS) guidance document

Data is provided by public hospitals in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Data is updated monthly.

The NBRS database is only accessed by authorised Health NZ staff for the purposes of:

  • maintenance
  • data quality
  • audit
  • analytics.

Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and Health NZ have access to the collection for analytical purposes, using Business Objects and the secure Health Information Network. Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the data dictionary.

Access to the collection requires approval from Health NZ.

Business Objects is being decommissioned.

We are required to make sure that the release of information meets the conditions of any legislation related to the privacy of health information. In particular the:

  • Official Information Act 1982
  • Privacy Act 2020
  • Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. A data release policy covers approval where appropriate from a health ethics committee.

Summary NBRS data is published in the Elective Services section as part of the Elective Services Patient Flow Indicators (ESPIs).

Regular data quality reconciliation reports are available to Health NZ districts.

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request. These can be electronic or on paper.

Our team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

We also offer a peer review service to make sure Health NZ data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.

Contact

For more information about this collection or to ask for specific datasets or reports email data-enquiries@health.govt.nz