This is often a point of confusion when billing for treatment of newborns in hospital.

The Health Insurance Act defines a patient as follows:

"patient" , in relation to a hospital, does not include:
(a) a member of the staff of the hospital who is receiving treatment in his or her own quarters; or
(b) except as provided by subsection (2), a newly-born child whose mother also occupies a bed in the hospital.

In Subsection (2):

(2) For the purposes of this Act:
(a) a newly-born child who occupies an approved bed in an intensive care facility in a hospital being a facility approved by the Minister for the purposes of this subsection, for the purpose of the provision of special care shall be deemed to be a patient of the hospital; and
(b) where there are two or more newly born children of the same mother in a hospital and those children are not in-patients of the hospital by virtue of paragraph (a)--each such child in excess of 1 shall be deemed to be a patient of the hospital.

So what this means is this:
1. A healthy newborn baby in a cot next to its mothers hospital bed is an outpatient
2. The baby only becomes an admitted inpatient if (a) it is admitted to the nursery, or (b) if it is the second or more of a multiple birth.