A performance audit conducted by the State’s Auditor-General Office has found that the Department of Health’s (DH) Victorian Alcohol and Drug Collection (VADC) dataset was not of high quality and did not achieve its intended benefits.
In his report Victoria’s Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Data, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves said the VADC did not accurately represent what service providers were doing for their clients.
“DH is responsible for the quality of VADC data and is working to improve it,” Mr Greaves said.
“However, there is a risk that DH’s improvement program will not address all the root causes of the data quality issues, including service providers’ limited data capabilities and capacities, and variation in the information technology (IT) systems they use to collect data,” he said.
“Poor-quality data limit DH’s ability to use it to plan services and manage providers’ performance.”
Mr Greaves said this also meant service providers needed to incur significant costs to address data quality issues.
He said the Department’s planning had had ongoing impacts on data quality.
He said he assessed planning for the VADC against the Australian Digital Health Agency’s Standards Development Model which described eight characteristics of high-quality datasets; 12 better-practice principles for developing health data specifications; and the impact of using poor practices.
“We found that DH fully met only five of the 12 better-practice principles when it planned the VADC,” Mr Greaves said.
“DH did not effectively manage the risk that service providers’ data capabilities and client management systems could impact data quality.”
He said the data quality issues impacted how the Department could use VADC to plan services and manage performance.
Mr Greaves made four recommendations to the Department aimed at improving VADC data quality.
The Auditor-General’s 48-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
