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Government Analytics, Healthcare IT

Analytics enhances patient safety in Victoria

By Adrienne Valdez | 11 March 2011

Victorian Health Services implemented a new system to deliver greater quality and safety, as well as a depth of reporting into incidents which could potentially result in harm to patients.

The Victorian Health Incident Management System (VHIMS) serves as a tool for collating, analysing and identifying trends and is a useful and important step forward in reporting errors and sentinel events.

In an official statement, Victorian Health Minister David Davis said, “Improving health outcomes for patients is a key focus of the Baillieu Government and we have now made fully operational a new management tool which will help to deliver better safety and higher quality services for Victorian patients.”

Every health practitioner is encouraged to report any errors which occurred within the hospital setting to maximise the base of information available for analysis and deal with problems as they emerge.

“Health services will have the ability to undertake analysis and trending of their own incident data. They will also be able to reap the benefits of utilising a standardised methodology for recording the degree of harm for a person affected in an incident,” Davis added.

The VHIMS will allow a greater depth of reporting across all levels of incidents. VHIMS data will provide the capacity for lessons learned within one organisation to be shared with others. A key component of VHIMS will be the delivery of effective information sharing mechanisms so that health services can benefit from analysis of state-wide data.

Analysis of the aggregate incident data will enable the Department to better target future quality improvement and patient safety initiatives in Victorian publicly-funded health services.

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