Development of the Australian Teaching and Training Classification

This public consultation paper seeks stakeholders’ views on the proposed structure and data items for inclusion for the ATTC. The consultation paper describes the work undertaken to date to design a nationally consistent method of classifying teaching and training activities and the associated costs, provides details of the statistical data analysis undertaken and consultation processes used.

The development of the ATTC builds on a significant program of work to develop an activity based funding (ABF) framework for teaching and training. In 2013, IHPA developed a set of nationally agreed definitions for teaching and training and research. The Definitions and Cost Drivers project also identified and analysed cost drivers for teaching and training, providing a framework for the development of a classification for teaching and training.

The structure of the ATTC has been based on the detailed findings from the Teaching, Training and Research Costing Study, conducted in 2015, which compared the relative costs to conduct teaching and training across both the professional group (e.g. allied health, medicine etc), and stage of training (e.g. student, new graduate or advanced trainee). Unlike the other streams currently funded through ABF where activity is a patient episode of care, the ATTC ‘activity’ unit is a trainee.

The development of the ATTC is in the interests of all Australian governments, public hospital health service providers and ultimately the professionals delivering and receiving teaching and training. It will provide more accurate and consistent data about the teaching and training provided across all public hospital service settings.

As with other classification systems, development of the ATTC is an iterative process. The initial version to be implemented will not specify all professional specialities, as data to support further classification development will need to be collected over coming years.

Submissions were forwarded to IHPA in a range of formats including Word, RTF, PDF and handwritten or typed hardcopy. In order to make submissions available as soon as possible, most submissions have been published in their original format. Handwritten submissions have been scanned into PDF documents. If the content has been emailed to IHPA the text of email submissions has been reproduced in Word format.