NEW ZEALAND HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICE

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Scope

Purpose
The General Medical Subsidy Data Warehouse (GMS) is used by Ministry of Health analysts and DHBs to:

• monitor contracts with providers
• support forecasting and setting of annual budgets
• analyse health needs and assess policy effectiveness.

Content
The GMS Datamart contains the fee-for-service payments made to doctors for patient visits that have been processed by the HealthPAC Proclaim system.

Start date

The GMS Datamart was established in August 2003 and contains data from November 2001.

Guide for use

All data transferred from HealthPAC to the GMS Datamart is claim-related data sent by claimants. Definitions in the GMS Datamart Data Dictionary are based on the GP Section 88 Notice.
The GMS Datamart includes only health events processed by HealthPAC. Most health events for which there are no fee claims are not included in the GMS Datamart.
For further details refer to the GMS Data Dictionary.

Contact information

For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports, contact the NZHIS Analytical Services Team, on ph 04 816 2882, fax 04 816 2898, or e-mail inquiries@nzhis.govt.nz.

Collection methods – guide for providers

All transactional data is sourced from HealthPAC’s Proclaim system. It is loaded into the GMS Datamart via an intermediate data store (the IDS).

Frequency of updates

The GMS Datamart receives monthly extracts from HealthPAC via the IDS.

Security of data

The GMS Datamart is accessed by authorised NZHIS staff for maintenance, data quality, audit and analytical purposes.
Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and DHBs have access to the data for analytical purposes, via the Business Objects reporting tool and the secure Health Information Network (HIN). Business Objects contains a subset of the data described in the Data Dictionary.

Privacy issues

The Ministry of Health is required to ensure that the release of information recognises any legislation related to the privacy of health information, in particular the Official Information Act 1982, the Privacy Act 1993 and the Health Information Privacy Code 1994.
Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. Researchers requiring identifiable data will usually need approval from an Ethics Committee.
As at August 2003, the encrypted NHI number is stored for approximately 85 percent of records.

National reports and publications

NZHIS releases monthly reports to the DHBs on the HIN in MS Excel format.

Data provision

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from the NZHIS Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.
The NZHIS Analytical Services team also offers a peer review service to ensure that NZHIS data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.
There may be charges associated with data extracts.


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