These appeared last week:
Government to act on all recommendations from health data review
By Daniella White
22 August 2018 — 12:00am
Talking points
- The review came after ACT failed to give key data to the productivity commission in 2017
- The report made nine core recommendations
- There have previously been 175 recommendations from data reviews since 2012
A review of ACT Health's data failures has found staff were not fully aware of the impacts of poor data or told about the benefits of quality data.
The system-wide data review was ordered by Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris in February 2017 after the department failed to provide figures on its emergency department to the Productivity Commission due to concerns over accuracy.
It came after six previous external reviews and two auditor general reports on ACT health's data since 2012, culminating in 175 recommendations.
The current review showed only 69 of those recommendations have been completed.
The report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday - about five months late - and made nine core recommendations.
Ms Fitzharris said the government was committed to implementing all recommendations of the current report - including to build a new data repository - with the rollout to begin this year, but the full cost not yet known.
Among the other key recommendations was to routinely review data quality, create user friendly documents, maintain security and privacy through staff training and deliver timely information.
The review painted a picture of a chaotic data system with 250 different systems in place that hold patient information across ACT Health.
It found governance of data was confused, with no single area responsible for the 1200 requests for data each year.
Data definitions were found to not be consistent or aligned with national standards.
It found some staff were not aware of the impact of poor or inaccurate data entry. They were also not fully aware of the benefits of having high quality data and staff were not supported to meet their data training responsibilities.
The report noted the public did not have access to timely data and there were gaps around privacy of data.
Ms Fitzharris said previous reviews' recommendations had become confused over time.
She said she was committed to making the data useful and meaningful for consumers in real time, such as by having current emergency department wait times online.
“As Minister for Health and Wellbeing I called this review because data reporting and management is integral to running an informed hospital and health care system that is accountable, transparent and responsive," Ms Fitzharris said.
More here:
And here:
ACT Health to build 'single source of truth' data repository
By Justin Hendry on Aug 24, 2018 11:30AM
Will consolidate 250 different systems.
ACT Health has started building a single repository to unify its data holdings following a system-wide review of the territory’s health data management processes.
The “single source of truth for all data requirements” is one of nine key recommendations from the review [pdf] accepted by the government earlier this week to improve data governance, collection and management.
The review had been order by Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris last year after ACT Health was unable to provide the Productivity Commission with figures on emergency department performance because of concerns with the accuracy of its data.
The new data repository and reporting capability will “collect, store, extract and transform quality data to deliver better insights to the community”.
It will see the more than 250 different system – a number of which are outdated in part due to budgetary constraints – in place across the agency that hold patient data reformed.
“This is a complex environment to collect, store, transform and report consistent information on the 1.5 million episodes of care that ACT Health provides each year,” the review states.
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Things are made clearer reading this very recent Implementation Plan report from ACT Health.
Reading this makes it pretty clear that information and data management in the ACT needs a genuine ‘reboot’ with adoption of best practice and use of a lot of learnings from entities like the Aust. Institute of Health and Welfare and their data-dictionary and their information governance expertise. It is also clear that, from what has gone on in the past, major change is needed.
This is a big job in even the smallest of our health systems!
David.
I would confidently assume this is not isolated to ACT, of just or if not more concern is an organisation such as the DOH or ADHA which are not to a large extent fluid in health data language or in the business of recording health data for the use in treatment. You have to ask, are these organisations fit to access data, and big data analytics?
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting read - http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-01/health-data-growth-has-privacy-legal-implications/10156396