Welcome

Hello and welcome to the 5th edition (August 2020) of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Reporting e-newsletter. This e-newsletter provides important updates about the Health Data Portal (the 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: Portal Support and Helpdesk

Item 3: The Portal: Continuous Improvement Activities 

Item 4: QLIK: New nKPI Summary report feature coming soon

Item 5: nKPI Data Validation Scorecard

 
 
 
 

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

The current nKPI, OSR and HCP number reporting period has been extended by 14 days and will now close on Sunday, 30 August 2020 at 11.59 pm (local time). 

The Department of Health appreciates the strong commitment made by many health services to voluntarily submit their data assets this reporting period, despite this reporting round being non-mandatory. 

Instead, reporting has been strongly encouraged due to the benefits for your health service, and the broader Closing the Gap agenda, that are achieved through data reporting. The changes in the nPKI, OSR or HCP data submitted can also provide a clear picture of the impacts of COVID-19 on services and service delivery for your health service and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. 

As of Monday, 10 August 2020:

  • 91 of the 239 nKPI reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 110 were progressing their data asset through the Portal and 38 had not yet started;
  • 56 of the 242 OSR reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the AIHW, 144 were progressing a data asset through the Portal and 42 had not yet started; and
  • 37 of the 130 HCP reporting health services had submitted their data asset to the Department of Health, with 68 progressing a data asset and 25 not yet started.

To date, only 3 health services have confirmed they will not be reporting. 

The Northern Territory (NT) has the highest number of nKPI data assets (38) and OSR (25) submitted to the AIHW. New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are second highest for both nKPI (15) and OSR (11). Queensland is third highest for nKPI (14) and Western Australia is third with 7 OSR submissions.

Queensland has the highest number of HCP number reports submitted to the Department of Health at 11, followed by NT (7) and Victoria with 6.

If your health service requires any assistance to commence, or finalise, your reporting, or if you have any questions about the extended reporting period (until 30 August 2020), please contact the Portal Support team at indigenousreporting@health.gov.au 

 
 
 
 

Item 2: 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 (QRG) (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)
  • Portal How-to Videos 

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.

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

A list of data reporting contacts including the AIHW, is available via the Portal Contact Details in the Portal webpage or the Contact Us page in the Portal. 

 
 
 
 
 

Item 3: The Portal: Continuous Improvement Activities 

Over the last three years, the Portal team has worked closely with health services, vendors and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health community sector to design, develop and implement the Portal for nKPI, OSR and HCP data reporting. The end of the current reporting period will mark the fourth successful reporting round using the Portal. The success of the Portal is largely due to the ongoing collaboration between the Department of Health, health services and other stakeholders during the last three years. 

We are now at a stage of the Portal's development where we can look at how we can enhance and improve it with a particular focus on the QLIK data analytics functionality.

We are keen to know if, and how, QLIK is meeting the needs of health services. Therefore, two important activities will be conducted in the coming weeks and months to help us collect information to inform the QLIK enhancements. These are: 

1. July-August 2020 Reporting in the Portal Feedback Survey: A short online survey will be sent to each health service via email in early September 2020. The aim of the Portal Feedback survey is to identify features of the Portal that are working well, and where improvements can be made. The survey should only take 5 - 10 minutes maximum to complete and is voluntary. 

​2. QLIK Continuous Improvement Design Sessions - October 2020: These sessions will be open to all health services and conducted via Webex (an online videoconferencing / meeting application) during October 2020. The aim is to identify features of the QLIK Interactive Reports that are providing value to health services, and how the QLIK Interactive Reports could be improved. The sessions also provide an opportunity for health services to share their insights on how they are using QLIK, and the benefits they are realising through the Interactive Reports, with each other. 

More information about these activities, including how you can participate, will be communicated to all health services via email in the coming weeks.

 
 
 
 

Item 4: QLIK: New nKPI Summary Report feature coming soon

In the coming months, a new feature will be available through QLIK that will enable health services to download their nKPI summary reports in PowerPoint format. Using the finalised processed nKPI data, these reports will replace the current service level reports that the AIHW provide at the completion of each reporting period. Health services will be able to customise the design and content of their PowerPoint report to suit their own internal reporting and continuous quality improvement purposes. 

Training in QLIK will be conducted in the near future. More information about QLIK training will be communicated to health services in the coming weeks. 

 
 
 

Item 5: nKPI Data Validation Scorecard

To ensure that the data which health services submit to the Portal does not contain errors introduced by the clinical information system (CIS) vendors, the Department of Health has been conducting regular, independent checking of the report data produced by each CIS, and working with each vendor to address any issues. This data validation occurs at least every twelve months, and is repeated whenever vendors introduce major updates to their core systems or their reporting tools.

Currently, nKPI data validation is conducted for the Department of Health by NPS MedicineWise through a controlled data set. This results in a report to the Department and a summary vendor ‘scorecard’ which you can access here: https://www.nps.org.au/nkpi.

The CIS tested were Communicare, Medical Director, Best Practice and MMEx.

Overall, the key finding is that “All clinical information systems passed both the nKPI report and OSR validation with only minor qualifications. In the opinion of NPS MedicineWise, the data reported from these systems are correct and comparable” (NPS MedicineWise 2020).

 
The Health Data Portal team
Australian Government Department of Health
E: indigenousreporting@health.gov.au
PO Box 9848, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia 

The Department of Health acknowledges the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia, and their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and future.
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