NEW ZEALAND HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICE

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The Mental Health Services data mart (MHS DM) was established to enable NZHIS Information Analysts to carry out reporting and ad hoc queries independently of the monthly validation and updating processes taking place in the MHINC database. It is a high-level national data mart that:

• allows the Ministry of Health to manipulate and report data to monitor the implementation of the national mental health strategy
• provides data extracts for research into the provision of mental health services.

Every month, the MHS DM is reconstructed from the contents of the MHINC database.

The MHS DM was started in July 2000.

The MHS DM contains information about healthcare users’ demographics, their use of mental health services, and their diagnosis and legal status. During the load process, the records are linked by unique identifier, agency and dates but, because of the nature of the data, these links require interpretation. For example, legal statuses and diagnoses do not have expiry dates and are assumed to be current until they are superseded by new data. The MHS DM is dependent on the quality of information in the MHINC.

The MHS DM data dictionary is available as a PDF file (928 kB).


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