NOCC Technical Specifications

Mental Health National Outcomes and Casemix Collection: Technical specification of State and Territory reporting requirements – Version 2.11, 2023

The purpose of the NOCC Technical Specifications is to outline the reporting requirements for provision of the NOCC dataset by States and Territories to the Australian Government. The document provides details about the:

  • data content of all items included in the Mental Health National Outcomes and Casemix Collection;
  • business rules to be followed in the reporting of those data items (i.e. what data are required when); and
  • extract format to be used when preparing data files for submission to the Australian Government.

The reporting requirements outlined in the NOCC Technical Specifications represent the agreed national minimum requirements and are not intended to limit the scope of data collections maintained by individual service agencies or States and Territories. The MH NOCC Technical Specifications Ver 2.11 applies to the collection of the NOCC from 1 July 2023. In December 2022 the NOCC was established as a combined National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) and National Best Endeavours Data Set (NBEDS) by the National Health Data and Information Standards Committee (NHDISC). NOCC Technical Specifications Version 2.11 represents implementation of the new metadata standards.

The Online MDS Validator also includes the technical components of the MH NOCC Technical Specifications Ver 2.11.

For those who might need it, the previous versions of the Technical Specifications are available:

For those interested in information about the clinical measures specified in the NOCC Technical Specifications, go to: Mental Health National Outcomes and Casemix Collection: Overview of clinician-rated and consumer self-report measures. Others may also be interested in what constitutes valid clinical ratings for the purposes of statistical reporting. See NOCC Rating Validity.