Successive reports have pointed to specific issues affecting the quality and management of data, such as incomplete patient chart documentation, non-compliance to province-wide standards and lack of access to education for those entering in data.

On December 1, 2005, the Ontario government announced the establishment of 14 Local Data Management Partnerships to enhance the health system’s capacity to manage information and address data quality issues. The new Local Data Management Partnerships bring together health information management officials from hospitals and the community care sector in each of the 14 new Local Health Integration Networks. They will work together to identify best practices, standards, tools, and policies for better data quality and management.

The goal is to allow faster access to the data that is documented by clinical teams in hospitals and case managers in Community Care Access Centres and the data that is collected and reported by their health information managers. This will eventually enable health care system managers and decision-makers to measure what needs are being met, to determine where the need is greatest, and to make informed decisions that will contribute to the better management of health care resources. Ultimately that means a better quality of care for people across the province.

The objectives of the Data Management Partnerships will be to:

• Make local data management processes more effective and efficient
• Improve the timeliness and quality of data
• Make more effective use of scarce health information management resources
• Encourage health care providers to adopt best practices.

Ontario’s First Physician Documentation Expert Panel

Poor documentation has been cited in several reports as one of the key factors contributing to issues with data quality and timeliness. Recommendations from these reports have included creating a forum for physicians to address these issues. As part of the Local Data Management Partnership initiative, the province has established the first Physician Documentation Expert Panel.

The panel will be responsible for:

• Approving a provincial physician education package for hospital-based clinicians and suggesting appropriate mechanisms for its dissemination.
• Making recommendations to Ontario medical schools on how they can enhance their clinical documentation curriculum.
• Approving a provincial chart completion policy template with recommendations on minimum chart completion requirements and time limits.
• Providing support and recommendations to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to enhance existing documentation guidelines.
• The panel will also be responsible for identifying other opportunities to improve chart documentation and suggesting an appropriate plan of action.

Reducing the Burden of Data Collection

The many demands to collect and report data that are placed on health care facilities and agencies across Ontario can represent a considerable burden on resources. In a recent survey of Ontario hospitals by the Information Management Team, hospitals reported spending an inordinate amount of time preparing and submitting information – hundreds of hours, in fact, for financial and statistical reporting.

Reducing the burden of data collection means looking at what kind of data health care providers are producing and getting rid of data that is not used or not worth the cost of collecting because it’s redundant, of poor quality or low value.

In June 2005, three metric tonnes of paper were eliminated, freeing up 20,000 person hours in Ontario’s Community Care Access Centres (CCACs). Now they can focus on the management of care instead of on the production of paper.

Mapping Out the Current and Future State of Information Management

All the data that the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care holds was documented by identifying:

• Where and how data is collected and by whom
• Where the data is stored, and how the data flows between the various databases and data warehouses
• Who has access to what information
• Who makes decisions based on that information.

Through research, interviews and a thorough environmental scan of available information holdings in use in Ontario, the value chain of health information was mapped out (see diagram one).

This diagram is a representation of how information makes its way across the health system from its point of origin, when it is first collected, to its ultimate destination; the multiple end users who need information for research, planning, policy making or decision making.

A blueprint for the future state of information management (see diagram two) was then developed as part of the Information Management Strategy. This diagram depicts a more organized, efficient, and ultimately more sustainable way of managing health information through its entire life cycle to meet the information needs of health system planners, analysts, managers and decision makers.

As a result of this detailed, analytical work, the Information Management Team produced the Ontario Health Planning Data Guide, the first comprehensive index of all health-planning data.

Ontario's First Clinical Data Blitz

In collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the Hospital Report Research Collaborative, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and the Joint Policy and Planning Committee, the Information Management Team completed the first-ever clinical-data blitz with Ontario hospitals.

This entailed province-wide sessions with hospitals designed to improve the quality of data that they submit to CIHI pertaining to acute inpatient and ambulatory care. This resulted in the voluntary correction of more than 1,400 abstracts – a concrete example of the system working to produce better data.

© Queen's Printer for Ontario, 2002  |  Privacy Policy  |  Disclaimers  |   Last Modified :