Seeding information management capacity to support operational management in hospitals

Abstract

There are vast amounts of regularly reported data in the information systems of hospitals, state and federalgovernments. The increase in accessibility offered by platforms such as the Health Information Exchange (HIE) inNew South Wales (NSW) creates a new level of opportunity. Administrative data can also speak to clinical andmanagerial issues. The capacity to mine these data and use the information for improving quality and efficiency hasnot been well developed at the "coal face" of operational management. Whilst it has been both possible and useful totrack utilisation of services to hospitals and patients as cost and volume, it has not been of interest to track these samedata 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. Thechallenge is to develop the interdisciplinary capacity to query administrative data to facilitate clinical and managerialdecision-making. We report here a possible model of a systematic approach to developing this capacity and some ofthe results of equipping operational and clinical managers to study problems in their own work settings. These effortshave required no additional internal resources, while the payoffs have been considerable.