Table 1 : Selected hospitals in the VAED, 2002/03 to 2004/05: an overview.

	Mean	Standard Deviation
Number of admissions	13690	19033
Average Length of Stay (LOS), by days	4.12	2.25
Mortality rate, by episodes	1.72%	1.22%
Unplanned readmissions, by episodes	1.45%	0.96%
Average Expenses ($'000)	69658	108687
(capital, $'000)	3665	5735
(labour, $'000)	51587	79213
(materials, $'000)	14406	24635
Number of hospitals in 2002/03	85	--
Number of hospitals in 2003/04	83	--
Number of hospitals in 2004/05	46	--

Mean and standard deviation of vital statistics of the hospitals in the VAED sample,
2002-2004. All generalist hospitals of a "significant scale", defined as at least 4
mortality and readmissions incidents in a year, were included (214/308). A group
of hospitals were merged at the administrative level in 2004, with no change to
operations. Hospital identities are encoded and cannot be matched from year to
year. The currency is Australian Dollars (AUD).