Page 337 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 14 February 2017
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of its data. Indeed, following last year’s budget estimates hearing for Health, while reviewing the third ACT Health quarterly performance report for 2015-16, ACT Health’s director-general identified further issues with data in the report and took immediate action to conduct an internal review of the accuracy of the data.
Once it was determined that errors existed, the director-general immediately engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers as an independent expert to review ACT Health’s data governance and protocols and to provide independent quality assurance of any data released publicly through the 2015-16 annual report, the quarterly performance reports and, subsequently, data for this year’s report on government services. The initial focus of this work with PwC was the accuracy and integrity of the data for the annual report and quarterly performance reports. This was stated very clearly in ACT Health’s media release of 9 November 2016 with the release of its four quarterly performance reports for 2015-16.
The Health Directorate has also had ongoing communication with key health stakeholders such as national reporting agencies like the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare, AIHW, the National Health Funding Body, NHFB, and the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, IHPA, as well as with the ACT Auditor-General.
As the work to resolve the data management issues at ACT Health is ongoing, the directorate has been unable to meet certain data reporting deadlines. This applies to elements of the 2017 report on government services released earlier this month. There were some data gaps in chapter 12, which relates to public hospitals, and in chapter 13, which relates to mental health services. Although ACT Health was unable to meet the submission deadlines for these indicators, significant efforts were made by the directorate to work with our national reporting agencies to submit the data. ACT Health is also continuing to work with the commission to ensure that future ROGS reports contain this data.
I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the significant support provided to the directorate from PwC and the AIHW to deliver data to the Productivity Commission. I would also like to thank the Productivity Commission, the NHFB and IHPA for their support.
In addition to the 2017 ROGS report, there may be future reports, such as the Australian Medical Association’s public hospital report card, that will be affected by the late data supplied to the AIHW. I have asked for further quality assurance work to be undertaken before the ACT Health half-yearly performance report is tabled. In addition, I will ensure that the directorate not only resolves its data management issues for all future reporting but also provides assurance on past data. I would also like to reassure the Assembly that my advice is that this does not impact upon financial contributions from the commonwealth.
The work to review ACT Health’s data governance and protocols is ongoing. As part of this system-wide review, ACT Health staff are working hard to resolve these issues, and this work includes undertaking integrity validation checks against source systems,
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