Table 1

Characteristics of individuals, hospital episodes and hospital couplets
Characteristic		Individuals		Episodes		Couplets (2^ndEpisode)
		Number	% of Dataset	Number	% of Dataset	Number	% of Dataset

Sex	Male	522167	44.1	3156438	41.7	2634271	41.3
	Female	662841	55.9	4405035	58.3	3742194	58.7
	Indeterminate	4	0.0	13	0.0	7	0.0
TOTAL		1185014	100	7561486	100	6376472	100

Age Group	0–16 Years	313244	26.4	1045092	13.9	731848	11.5
	17–39 Years	443602	37.4	2495039	33.1	2051437	32.3
	40–69 Years	326974	27.6	2708572	35.9	2381598	37.5
	70+ Years	100870	8.5	1292462	17.1	1191592	18.7
TOTAL		1184690	100¹	7541165	100²	6356475	100³

Hospital	Teaching	367964	31.1	2852257	37.7	2484293	39.0
Type	Public Metropolitan	198456	16.7	902286	11.9	703830	11.0
	Private Metropolitan	313563	26.5	1838354	24.3	1524791	23.9
	Public Country	279315	23.6	1745527	23.1	1466212	23.0
	Private Country	25097	2.1	208883	2.8	183786	2.9
TOTAL		1184395	100⁴	7547307	100⁵	6362912	100⁶

¹324 missing ²20321 missing ³19997 missing ⁴619 missing ⁵14179 missing ⁶13560 missing Missing records were caused by missing data in the relevant fields of the individual records and do not reflect deficiencies in the linkage process.
Moorin and Holman Australia and New Zealand Health Policy 2005 2:12 doi:10.1186/1743-8462-2-12