Data and insights that help governments prioritise health challenges and allocate resources, rely on robust country-wide health information systems. How is New Zealand tracking?
Data and information that help governments prioritise health challenges and allocate necessary resources rely on strong country-wide health information systems. These systems identify healthcare availability as well as access and quality of care issues that prevent the attainment of health coverage.
Timely, reliable, actionable data is essential for delivering interventions to improve the health of populations. Translating data to policies and actions requires effective investment in mechanisms which focus on using data to formulate policy; mechanisms which ensure data can be accessed and shared openly; and country-led governance of data.
Data quality is a critical issue for health facilities with many countries showing clear evidence that data quality assurance processes have been followed for their published health facility data.
In New Zealand, The Health Identity Platform (HIP) is being designed to become the health sector’s trusted and authoritative source of master data for patient and provider identity, demographics, preferences, relationships, enrolments, entitlements and medical warnings. Authorised users can securely and reliably interact with HIP services and can rely on the quality of data managed within the HIP platform. Patients and providers can access and update their own details to improve the quality and currency of HIP data services.
The purpose of the National Health Index (NHI), including the NHI number, is to help with the planning, coordination and provision of health and disability support services across New Zealand. The purpose of the National Enrolment Service (NES) is to provide a real time view of a person’s health providers. The purpose of the Medical Warnings System (MWS) is to warn health providers of any known risk factors that may be important when making clinical decisions about individual patient care.
The NHI number is used to uniquely identify health information in national and regional clinical databases that are accessible to approved health providers, including the National Immunisation Register (NIR), the National Enrolment Service (NES) and the Regional Clinical Data Repositories (CDR).
Transparent, accurate and accessible information enables patients and the public to know whether the services they are receiving are high quality, efficient and effective. Equally, clear and effective engagement with the public builds confidence that individuals’ data contributions are creating real benefits for themselves and wider society, thus underpinning further improvement and transformation.
To develop integrated care with timely, relevant and high-quality performance data, it is essential to ensure that there is a two-way flow between systems and national bodies.