Enhancing diversity data in hospitals

Earlier this year, the HSS Hospital Administrations team completed an initiative to enhance data collected within WA Health hospitals.

The web-based Patient Administration System (webPAS) now captures valuable and important data, such as:

• Country of birth
• Ancestry and ethnicity 
• Main languages spoken at home
• Next of kin main languages spoken at home, for patients under 18.

The collaboration between HSS, Department of Health and Child and Adolescent Health Service addressed recommendations for quality improvement in data collection. Information gathered will help provide accessible health services, develop effective communication strategies and develop health promotion/disease prevention and control approaches targeted at community groups that are more at risk.

This supports WA Health’s commitment to achieving equity in health outcomes and access to care with a focus on Aboriginal people, consumers and carers of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

"The HSS, Patient Administration Systems team has an excellent working relationship with the Department of Health Metadata Purchasing and Systems Performance team. This supported us in successfully implementing Culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) data items in webPAS. Teamwork drives our success - we strive to make a difference together", enthused Team Leader and integral asset to the initiative, Laura Hall.

The team worked tirelessly over 18 months to ensure all the requirements were met. This included high level testing over multiple environments with stakeholders and systems.

This is another great achievement that demonstrates we put our customers at the heart of what we do, while making a difference together.