Abstract:
It has long been recognised that vast amounts of regularly reported data exist in the information
systems of hospitals, states and the federal government. The increase in accessibility offered by
platforms such as the Health Information Exchange (HIE) in NSW creates a new level of
opportunity. Administrative data can also speak to clinical and managerial issues. The capacity
to mine these data and use the information for improving quality and efficiency has not been well
developed at the “coal face” of operational management. Whilst it has been both possible and
useful to track utilisation of services to hospitals and patients as cost and volume, it has not been
of interest to track these same data to the operational locus of care – the nursing unit, the
operating room, the imaging department. With HIE-type systems, the information is now more
readily available and operational managers know this. The challenge is to develop the
interdisciplinary capacity to query administrative data to advantage clinical and managerial
decision-making. We report here a possible model of a systematic approach to developing this
capacity and some of the results of equipping operational and clinical managers to study
problems in their own work settings. These efforts have required no additional internal resources,
while the payoffs have been considerable.
