Stuart and Eileen, on behalf of the Health Data Portal Team, wish you all a happy and safe holiday season
December 2021
bi-monthly e-newsletter
Contents include:
Item 1: Mandatory nKPI reporting 1 January to 15 February 2022
Item 2: What’s New/Different for January 2022 nKPI reporting
Item 3: Updates to indicators PI12, PI18 and PI19
Item 4: Updates to clinical information systems
Item 5: How do I know I've finished reporting?
Item 6: National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021-2031
Item 7: Training
Item 8: Health Data Portal User Support
Artwork: One’s Journey to Health by Luke Penrith, 2020
Item 1: Mandatory nKPI reporting 1 January to 15 February 2022
The 1 January 2022 to 15 February 2022 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Key Performance Indicators (nKPI) reporting round will be mandatory.
The last 3 reporting rounds, since July 2020 reporting, were non-mandatory in recognition of the impact of managing the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You would have received a housekeeping email giving you suggestions to assist you to prepare, and a letter attached addressed to your CEO, advising of the return to mandatory reporting. If your CEO believes there is a compelling reason to request an exemption please send an email, outlining your reasons, to indigenousreporting@health.gov.au.
We wish to extend our gratitude to all those services who submitted over 90% of reports over each of the 3 non-mandatory reporting rounds. This demonstrates to us you find value in having the data available to you, in near real time, through the Qlik interactive reports. The data you submit assists, in so many ways, to close the gap in health outcomes, support continuous quality improvement activities, and achieve clinical milestones.
Item 2: What’s New/Different for January 2022 nKPI reporting
Several enhancements/changes have been included in the Health Data Portal (HDP), to assist health services with their reporting in January-February 2022. These enhancements are:
- Changes to the “comments unresolved” text on the Reporting Dashboard
- Changes to the weight categories and age groups in PI12
- PI15 has been removed from the nKPI form
- Changes to PI18
- No reporting of PI19 for this collection only
- Time trend data validations have been disabled for PI12, PI18 and PI19
- Time trend data validations have been reenabled for PI01, P02, PI09, PI10, PI11, PI13 and PI24
- Some sheets have been added to the QLIK Indigenous Health Dashboard since the July 2021 reporting round.
The next item (below) provides details on the nKPI changes.
The What's New/Different for January 2022 nKPI Reporting document has details on all changes for reporting in January.
Item 3: Updates to indicators PI12, PI18 and PI19
Following on from the updates made to a range of indicators over the past two nKPI reporting rounds, changes have been made to indicators PI12 and PI18 for the coming nKPI collection. As with all the previous nKPI updates, these changes have been recommended by a clinical and technical working group reporting to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services Data Advisory Group (HS DAG).
PI12
Updated description
Proportion of regular clients who are Indigenous, aged 18 and over who have had their body mass index (BMI) classified as:
- underweight (<18.50)
- normal weight (>=18.50 but <25)
- overweight (>=25 but <30)
- obese (>=30)
- not calculated
within the previous 24 months.
What has changed?
- Lowered inclusion age from 25 years and over to 18 years and over
- Measured across five categories: BMI not calculated; BMI underweight: BMI normal weight: BMI overweight; and BMI obese.
(For full details of the updated indicator, see page 27 of the specification document available on the NPS MedicineWise website.)
PI18
Updated description
Proportion of regular clients who are Indigenous, who are recorded as having:
- Type 2 diabetes OR
- Cardiovascular disease (CVD) OR
- Type 2 diabetes and/or CVD
AND who have had either:
- an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) AND an
- albumin/creatinine ratio (ACR) test result recorded
- only an eGFR test result recorded
- only an ACR test result recorded
- neither an eGFR NOR an ACR test result recorded
within the previous 12 months.
What has changed?
- Changed the age range to include all age groups (addition of 0-14 year olds)
- Changed eGFR and ACR reporting to ‘both tests’, ‘one test’, or ‘neither test’
- Added an ‘either or both’ category to count the number of clients with any of the included condition (CVD and type 2 diabetes).
(For full details of the updated indicator, see page 34 of the specification document.)
PI19
PI19 will not be reported for the January 2022 reporting round, but will be collected again from June 2022 onwards. This temporary suspension is due to clinical advice to the Department that further changes to the specification are needed to more accurately reflect national CKD guidelines.
No action is required from you regarding PI19. You will not see the PI19 reporting tab in the Health Data Portal and no CKD result data will be captured in this collection.
All relevant indicator changes have been made to the nKPI reports in Best Practice, Communicare, MedicalDirector and MMEx, and will be automatically applied to future nKPI reporting.
Item 4: Updates to clinical information systems
If you use Best Practice, Communicare or MedicalDirector you need to update to the latest version of the reporting tool for the indicator changes detailed above to be reflected in your nKPI submission for January 2022.
The latest versions are:
- Best Practice: BP Premier Reporting Tool, version 11452 (or later)
- Communicare: GRT, version 1.5.2 (1.3.1.3); internal reports, version 20210930
- Medical Director: MD Insights, version 1.8.12
- MMEx: no local software update needed.
If you need assistance or to check you have the latest version, please reach out to your CIS vendor.
As with previous collections, NPS MedicineWise has undertaken extensive data validation testing of the indicator changes made to all four CIS. The latest vendor scorecard is available on the NPS MedicineWise website. NPS found that all vendors had implemented the indicator changes correctly.
Item 5: How do I know I've finished reporting?
There are a variety of statuses in the submission workflow process. Depending on the size of your organisation, you could have one person assigned to each role, or one person assigned multiple roles. If you are happy with the data, the final status is 'Submission Approved' to finish reporting and send the data assets to the AIHW for processing.
What if my data asset is returned to me from the AIHW?
The AIHW may return your data asset, asking clarification questions. If this happens, please review the questions and the related data items. Then, if you are happy with either the data or your responses to AIHW's clarification questions, set the data asset to 'Submission Approved' to send back to the AIHW.
This can happen more than once. You are not finished reporting until you change the status to 'Submission Approved' and the AIHW does not return it back. Then your data asset becomes 'Processed'.
Item 6: National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021-2031
The refreshed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021-2031 was released on 15th December 2021 in partnership between the Australian Government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health leaders. It is the new national policy to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the next 10 years. The document is available on the Department of Health website at: Refreshed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan charts new way forward.
We would like to thank all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services and leaders who contributed to the development of the Health Plan.
Item 7: Training
Mandatory reporting of your service's nKPI commences 1 January 2022. To assist you, there is training available for both new and existing users.
The new user training will run through all aspects of Indigenous Health Data Reporting in the HDP.
Existing users may benefit with training on What's New/Different to get across the changes in the nKPI form for January-February 2022 reporting.
If you would like training please email indigenousreporting@health.gov.au and request a session.
Item 8: Health Data Portal User Support
New and existing users are always able to request training. Remember you have all your data available for you through the Qlik interactive reports. If you need training on how to take advantage of this resource, please reach out to the HDP Support Team.
Alternatively, there is a large suite of HDP User Support resources available at the bottom of each of the HDP pages.
You can contact the HDP Support team (Stuart Dunn or Eileen Aguirre) by emailing indigenousreporting@health.gov.au.