Stephen Duckett recently did a presentation on safer health care system using data and the idea of preventability. He drew his insights from three key reports that his colleagues and him have been working on: Report 1: Strengthening safety and statistics report: which looks at different ways of measuring and improving hospital care and improving … Continue reading Duckett’s idea of Preventability
In a bid to achieve better health and social outcomes for Australian veterans, Labor has announced its dedication to introduce compulsory reporting on these matters to ensure effective policy and practices are in place. Following our British counterpart which assures their soldiers “fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they (and … Continue reading Moving towards better health outcomes for Veterans
Economic evaluation provides information that helps health providers spend wisely. It provides health providers with the knowledge they need to weigh up different options, all designed to achieve the same result – looking at their relative costs andbenefits. Cost-effectiveness analyses are mandatory in Australia when applications for listing new medicines or services request government subsidy through the PBS or MBS. Australia was the … Continue reading Economic evaluations of healthcare services and their contributions to health policy decisions
The 1st of July marks not just the beginning of the new financial year, but the day many will start their month long abstinence from alcohol for Dry July – Australia’s annual campaign to raise money for those affected by cancer. But can these campaigns have an effect on our health outcomes in addition to … Continue reading 3 long term benefits of going dry this July
In today’s day and age, thanks to technology, we know a lot of information about our patients before we have even said hello. Typically, when a patient is under our care, we can access their electronic health record and see their past medical history, imaging and pathology results, observations, clinical notes, family history and much … Continue reading How to measure outcomes that matter to patients
Large amounts of health data are held at different levels of government and by many organisations across the Australian healthcare system. Consequently, linking different types of information is almost impossible, and our healthcare intervention and prevention programs are suffering as a result. For example, in Australia, healthcare data that is routinely collected is not linked … Continue reading The role of patient information in healthcare program delivery
Enhancing systems measurement – no this is not about collecting more data! If we are serious about enhancing systems measurement, then I suggest we start by understanding what works well from a systems measurement perspective and what needs enhancing. Is it the data that needs enhancing, or how we use it? The knowing-doing gap is … Continue reading Enhancing systems measurement & continuous improvement
Monitoring the health of the population is fundamental to the provision of evidence-based services and to improving health status. Governments, non-government agencies and universities all have a role in contributing to the strategic delivery of health outcome reporting. Experience in Queensland over the past decade has identified three critical factors: Health intelligence A recognised vehicle … Continue reading Strategic delivery of health outcome reporting