Welcome

Hello and welcome to the 4th edition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Reporting e-newsletter. This e-newsletter provides important updates about the Health Data Portal as well as a range of additional relevant, timely and important information related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health data and reporting.

Content

Item 1: July - August 2020: National Key Performance Indicators (nKPI), Online Service Reports (OSR) and Health Care Provider (HCP) Reporting Status Update

Item 2: New feature: OSR Workforce Spreadsheet

Item 3: Health Data Portal Portal User Support Resources and Helpdesk

Item 4: Amendments to the nKPIs - an update

Item 1: July - August 2020 nKPI, OSR and HCP Reporting Status Update

The nKPI, OSR and HCP number reporting period commenced on 1 July 2020 and will close at 11.59 pm (local time) on Sunday, 16 August 2020. As you would be aware, there is non-mandatory reporting option for all Indigenous Australians' Health Programme funded health services for the current reporting round. This is in recognition of the additional pressures that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the delivery of health services.

As of 20 July 2020:

21 of the 239 nKPI reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 69 were progressing their data asset through the Portal and 149 had not yet started;
16 of the 257 OSR reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the AIHW, 130 were progressing a data asset through the Portal and 111 had not yet started; and
18 of the 129 HCP reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the AIHW, with 55 progressing a data asset and 56 not yet started.

Three of the nKPI/OSR reporting health services submitted their data assets to the AIHW during the first week of July 2020, which is a great result and demonstrates the value that health services place on their clinical data.

Reporting Housekeeping Reminders

On 11 June 2020, the Department of Healthy emailed a letter to your health service advising that in recognition of the additional pressures that the COVID-19 situation has created for health services, and based on the advice from the Indigenous health sector and other experts, the Department of Health has waived the mandatory reporting condition in the Indigenous Australian’s Health Programme (IAHP) grant funding agreement. If your health service does not intend to report during the current reporting period, please send an email to indigenousreporting@health.gov.au advising us of your decision to not report, so that we do not contact your health service about reporting during the current reporting period. Please be aware that the changes in the nPKI, OSR or HCP data submitted can provide an indication of the impacts of COVID-19 on services and service delivery for your health service, and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Therefore, there may be considerable value for your service in submitting the nKPI, OSR and HCP reports.
You will be aware the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) retired AUSkey at the end of March 2020. The new myGovID and Relationship Authorisation Manager (RAM) are needed to access the Portal. The Portal Support team is continuing to contact health services that have not yet registered with the Portal using a myGovID and RAM. If you need any assistance to register with the Portal using a myGovID and RAM, please contact the Portal Helpdesk on 1800 316 387 (8.30 am to 5.00 pm AEST Monday to Friday (excluding ACT and national public holidays). You can also email the Portal Support team at indigenousreporting@health.gov.au anytime.

Portal Feedback

The Portal team continues to receive feedback about how well the Portal is working and the value that the Qlik Interactive Reports provide to health services. This positive outcome is largely due to the effort and involvement of many health services during the co-design period. We have always valued health service collaboration and will continue to co-design, where possible, as we enhance the Portal in the future.

"The Health Data Portal is the best reporting system I have ever used. The Department of Health’s co-design process that I participated in has been effective, and there are many examples of health service suggestions that have since become features in the Portal. Recently, I’ve used the Qlik Interactive reports for Budja Budja to help us to see how our nKPI results compare to other, similar health services and to help us to set some organisational goals for this year. The reports are very easy to use, and I was able to find all the information I needed quickly. I also commend the Portal’s very responsive customer support team". (Roman Zwolak, Budja Budja Aboriginal Co-operative)

Item 2: New Feature: OSR Workforce Profile Spreadsheet

The Portal now includes a new feature, the Workforce Profile Spreadsheet, to help you collect your health service’s workforce data for OSR reporting. This new feature aims to address the challenges that some health services have previously experienced in collating, and reporting on, their workforce data.

The Workforce Profile Spreadsheet assists health services to compile Paid and Unpaid Positions FTE values offline to make it easier to complete the Workforce Profile sections of the Portal’s OSR form. The Workforce Profile Spreadsheet can be downloaded before the reporting round opens, giving health services more time to compile their workforce information. As a spreadsheet, it can also be easily given to staff in health services responsible for this data (such as the HR area) who may not have easy Portal access.

The Workforce Profile Spreadsheet can be downloaded from the Portal at any time through the current July – August 2020 Reporting Round Dashboard, or through your July - August 2019 Processed data asset. Details on how to download and use the Workforce Profile Spreadsheet are outlined in the Download the Workforce Profile Spreadsheet from an OSR Data Asset Quick Reference Guide.

For the July - August 2020 OSR collection, workforce data collected in the Workforce Profile Spreadsheet will need to be manually entered into the Workforce Profile sections of the Portal’s OSR form as this is the first time use of this spreadsheet. The intention is that for the July-August 2021 OSR collection, health services will simply upload the Workforce Profile Spreadsheet to the Portal to update and populate their Workforce Profile sections.

The Workforce Profile Spreadsheet is another example of how end user feedback, collected through the co-design process, has contributed to the continuous improvement of the Portal.

More information about the OSR data collection is available on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health organisations Online Services Report webpage.

If you have any questions regarding the OSR data collection or would like assistance to report, please contact the Portal Support team at: indigenousreporting@health.gov.au

Item 3: Portal Support and Helpdesk

User Support

A suite of user support resources are available to help you use the Portal including the QLIK Interactive Reports. User Support resources include:

Quick Reference Guides (QRGs) (step-by-step guides) including a What's New, What 's Different QRG for the current reporting round
Screencasts (interactive e-learning for new staff to learn the basics of the Portal and how it works)
Portal How-to Videos

Portal Videos for New Users

2. Portal Videos for Existing Users

User Guides (more technical information).

Portal Helpdesk

You can contact the Portal Helpdesk on 1800 316 387 between 8.30am and 5.00pm (Canberra time) Monday to Friday (excluding Australian Capital Territory and national public holidays). The Portal Helpdesk provides support to assist heath services with Portal registration and set up, and is the first point of contact for more complex queries which are escalated to the Portal Support team for action.

Please note: you can also refer to the Portal How-to Videos and online User Support Resources in the first instance, and/or email indigenousreporting@health.gov.au with your query where possible. This will help to ensure that the Portal Support team is available for complex queries, and to assist new Portal users who may require more intensive support.

Indigenous Health Data Reporting Contacts

For a full list of data reporting contacts including the AIHW, please access the Portal Contact Details in the Portal webpage or the Contact Us page in the Portal.

Item 4: Update: Amendments to the National Key Performance Indicators - an update

At its meeting on 9 December 2019, the Health Services Data Advisory Group (HS DAG) endorsed the nKPI and OSR Implementation Roadmap which sets out the implementation of 36 recommendations aimed at improving the relevance and utility of the two data collections. Those recommendations arose from 140 recommendations that we made from a range of previous reviews and projects. KPMG reduced the 140 to a list of 52 recommendations to reduced duplication and overlap. These 52 recommendations were further reduced to 36 following a workshop conducted with the Department of Health, and then validated by the HS DAG, at the 9 December 2019 meeting for appropriateness, effectiveness, and feasibility.

A substantial group of recommendations concerned the modification of a number of existing nKPIs to align them with current clinical guidelines. Twenty-two of the 24 nKPI recommendations were divided into logical groupings, to be considered and implemented in stages.

To progress implementation of nKPI recommendations, a newly-formed HS DAG nKPI Working Group met three times between April-June 2020 to consider potential amendments to the first group, comprising indicators 3, 7, 8, 14 and 22. The Working Group’s recommendations have now been passed to the HS DAG for endorsement.

For all agreed changes from this process, the next steps for implementation will be:

making changes to the AIHW’s master nKPI specifications in METeOR;
amending the nKPI specifications for clinical system vendors;
requesting vendors to make changes to their nKPI reporting tools;
updating the nKPI forms in the Health Data Portal; and
the nKPI interactive reports in Qlik.

It is likely that the changes to this first group of indicators will be built into the clinical information systems’ reports and the Portal so that they can be reported upon for the first time in the December 2020 nKPI collection (reported in January - February 2021).

We will continue to keep you updated as the nKPI and OSR Implementation Roadmap recommendations are implemented via this monthly e-newsletter.

If you would like any information about the nKPI and OSR Implementation Roadmap, its recommendations, or the projects listed above, please email the HS DAG Secretariat at: hs.data.advisory.group@health.gov.au You can also visit the nKPI and OSR Implementation Roadmap webpage (on the Department of Health's website) includes details of the 36 recommendations.