System Profile

Background
Conceptual Design of the NT AHKPI Information System
Use of KPI's
NT AHKPI – Issues Management
Changes or Additions to the existing NT AHKPIs

Background

For many years the health of the Aboriginal population has been significantly below the average for all Australians. Of principal concern is the fact that Aboriginal people have considerably shorter life expectancy than other Australians. Aboriginal people also suffer from reduced health outcomes across all age groups and tend to face considerably more chronic illness.

A major step towards Closing the Gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal people is to first establish a baseline on current Aboriginal health outcomes, particularly in remote Australia. In 1999 the Northern Territory Aboriginal Health Forum (NT AHF) identified the need for a common set of key performance indicators (KPIs) in Aboriginal primary care in order to establish this baseline.

The NT AHF undertook a project to further develop KPIs measuring Aboriginal health outcomes in such areas as chronic disease, antenatal care, babies, child health and adult health. This project identified 44 aboriginal health KPIs and agreed to initially implement 19 of these.

The Dept Health & Families (DHF) with agreement from the NT AHF has developed a system to facilitate the management and reporting of the NT jurisdiction set of Aboriginal health KPIs (AHKPIs) for all remote and urban Aboriginal primary health care services. In December 2008 the NT AHF endorsed the final version of the agreed NT AHKPIs (Version 1.3.1)

The NT AHF support for this work represents a unique and significant breakthrough in collaborative decision making, unparalleled in other Australian jurisdictions.

Conceptual Design of the NT AHKPI Information System

Use of KPIs

For the first time the NT AHF will be able to present a NT wide view of health outcomes in urban and remote Aboriginal primary health care throughout the Northern Territory. This information will be fed back to communities through standard reports and will streamline and simplify primary health care reporting requirements at both a Territory and Commonwealth level.

This evidence will be used to show trends in individual and population Aboriginal health outcomes and inform improvements in planning and policy development.

Clinical information is currently being collected from a mixture of DHF data sources such as the Primary Care Information System as well as a mixture of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations' Patient Information Recall Systems (PIRS) such as Communicare and Ferret.

The standard NT AHKPI reports will be provided to each Aboriginal Primary Health Care service provider with comparisons on each health community result against the overall NT results. This baseline information will be crucial in assessing and improving Aboriginal health outcomes as well as assisting the further development of future indicators and providing information towards developing an NT wide model of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI).

Evidence based outcomes with inform Aboriginal Health Forum planning and assist with the review of the Expanded Health Service Delivery Initiative as well as a basis for the NT CQI model.

NT AHKPI – Issues Management

A NT AHKPI system review and assessment structure was formed in December 2009 that will perform a ‘Continuous Quality Improvement’ role where working groups will review reporting and provide feedback to services from a clinical / PIRS perspective. This structure consists of three working groups that focus on policy, clinical and technical issues as detailed in the Terms of Reference for these groups. These groups have cross representation and the work of these groups will ensure the biannual reports generated from data delivered by 15 February and 15 August each year will be continuously improved in quality and developed further for content scope.

If you need to register an issue please send an email describing the issue identified to ahkpi.communications@nt.gov.au.

Changes or Additions to the existing NT AHKPIs

Another important role of the NT AHKPI Working Groups is to decide if there should be changes or additions to the current KPI definitions and data set. The Steering Committee is very conscious of the reporting burden placed on providers, and is committed to ensuring that any changes or additions are only made with very good reason - such as:

· Overcoming technical or other difficulties that have been identified with existing definitions;

· Maintaining alignment with other KPI sets in common use in the NT (eg Healthy for Life KPIs);

· Ensuring that the NT can meet emerging mandatory national reporting requirements.

Approved changes to the existing NT AHKPI definitions, or new KPIs will be completed twice a year according to the KPI Change Cycle timetable. This will enable the substantial technical work to occur within each Patient Information Recall System (PIRS), in the Data Extraction tool, and in the NT AHKPI system within the DHF hosted Data Warehouse.

We need your help to maintain and improve the NT AHKPIs.

If you have any problems, concerns or suggestions (or good news!) about the NT AHKPIs or the reports, or about the need for additional KPIs, please forward them to ahkpi.communications@nt.gov.au. Your ideas will be placed on the Issues Register for consideration by the Working Groups.