| Title : | Local Area Information Systems for Mental Health Services |
| Subtitle : | | General Principles and Guidelines |
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| Publisher : | Publication Production Unit (Public Affairs, Parliament and Access Branch) Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services |
| Authors : | | Allen Morris-Yates | | Gavin Andrews |
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| Synopsis : |
In 1992 when all Australian Health Ministers agreed to the National Mental Health Strategy, it was recognised that the lack of mental health data was a serious impediment to achieving the reform agenda. The Strategy is now approaching the completion of its first five years and with the Federal Government s recent Budget announcement of a further three years funding to the year 2001, it is timely to reflect on achievements in improving mental health data availability to date.
Activity has occurred at the State, Territory and Commonwealth Government levels to support the development of information systems, processes and business rules at the local level. The results of this activity can be seen in a number of ways; for example agreement has been reached on a mental health minimum data set for the institutional care setting and annual reporting on the Strategy has occurred through the National Mental Health Reports. Other areas where significant activity has occurred are: consumer outcomes where a national project is trialing measures of consumer outcome and facilitating information sharing regarding the benefits and challenges of different strategies of outcome measurement; funding models, where a national project aims to develop alternative models for funding mental health services including casemix classifications; and the endorsement and dissemination of National Standards for Mental Health Services for use by consumers and carers, and State and Territory mental health services.
Whilst much has been done since 1992 much remains to be done and, in most jurisdictions, little progress has been made in identifying who uses mental health services and why. This information will become available through minimum data set reporting for those who use inpatient services but information about consumers of non inpatient services still lags behind.
It is now time to build on what has been achieved and generate wider discussion on mental health information issues both for policy consideration and to inform developments in mental health service delivery information structures. In particular it is important to address the issue of how better quality mental health data can be made available to clinicians and administrators to improve the delivery of mental health services.
This paper will help to further such discussion by addressing issues surrounding the development of functional specifications for clinical information system design in mental health services and providing a statement of the minimum requirements needed to meet data needs of the National Mental Health Minimum Data Set. It also seeks to provide guidance to information system developers and mental health administrators who are developing or reviewing local-area clinical information systems. As such, I believe it will go a long way towards ensuring that new information systems will have the capacity to meet the requirements for national reporting.
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| Download : |
lais_guides.pdf
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