6 July 2009

Pact will soon be among the first NGOs (non-government organisations) in New Zealand to submit relevant mental health client data electronically.

The Ministry of Health’s PRIMHD (Programme for the Integration of Mental Health Data) project required all district health boards and the country’s four largest NGOs to submit client data electronically from July last year. This year, the next largest 20 NGOs have been asked to submit data electronically and Pact is part of this group. Smaller NGOs will be brought into the project over coming years , with a website under construction for the very small ones (that cannot afford to implement their own system) to enter their data online.

For NGOs, the Ministry of Health requires information on the length of stay of mental health clients and the types of activities they are doing daily.

Pact project manager Dita Ciulacu says the project was good timing for Pact. When work on our client database got underway, we did not know the ministry’s plans. However, it was fortunate we were still working on our client database when we learned about PRIMHD, so it could be adjusted to meet its requirements.

“Pact made a very, very good decision two or three years ago. There are some benefits coming out right now which nobody ever thought about before,” says Dita.

Dita says the ministry is very strict about the PRIMHD rules and about the format data should be in.

“We struggled for a while to adapt the database. The biggest change was to implement a client diary where the staff could record each activity.”

Dita says further changes will be made such as improving the ministry’s names for activities which are not always easy to digest.

“For example they have an activity called ‘Maori specific interventions.’ They are very specific names. With the 45 activities they have we will try to give them user-friendly names. The code behind them will be same [for reporting] but the interface [for staff] will be a little more user friendly.”

Pact needs to pass two compliance tests with the ministry to make sure our data is 95% compatible. We have already passed the first one, which used test data and we achieved provisional compliance to PRIMHD.

“And now we are waiting for them to let us know when we can send the full extract with real data. If we pass 95% error free then we get the full compliance. We are waiting now for the ministry to give us the green light to send the file.”

The system went live from July 1, meaning that from that date Pact had to be recording data conforming to the ministry’s requirements.

Dita says Pact has checked the data which was a huge task considering there are 500 mental health clients.

“But we thought it would be better if we checked the accuracy of the data ourselves. We are now just changing bits here and there and adjusting client information where it was not on the right format. But for the rest we are ready to go. It’s a huge achievement.”

Dita says Pact’s database was not created because the Ministry of Health asked for the specific electronic data.

“We are doing it because it’s the best way to do it. It’s better for us and it’s just lucky we can make the ministry happy too.”

She says the system replaces staff having to write reports by hand and means reports can be created and analysed very quickly. This information can be used to improve Pact services.

Dita says the new system only works thanks to the support workers entering the data.

“We really depend on 300 people out there to enter correct data. It’s really important they do this, because there is something really meaningful coming out of this.”

Pact will still need to send monitoring reports to the ministry, as it has always done, but these should be easier to create because the new system will provide about 75% of the information needed to complete them. Eventually these reports may no longer needed, as one aims of the PRIMHD project was to avoid data duplication.