The Quality Improvement Data System and Quality Audit Reporting System helps teams understand, measure and improve the safety of care. The Quality Audit Reporting System focuses on data collection, while the Quality Improvement Data System helps teams use that data to drive quality improvement.
Quality Improvement Data System (QIDS)
QIDS helps you turn data into action. It brings data from across NSW Health into a single platform and standardises it, so it is consistent and reliable. QIDS combines data from multiple sources into dashboards and quality improvement tools so you can:
- see current trends and outcomes
- track the impact of improvement work over time
- identify variation in care
- support decision-making with trusted data.
QIDS is available through the NSW Health network or VPN. To set up an account, contact your local health entity or improvement administrator.
Login to QIDS (NSW Health network only)
QIDS has 7 modules:
Dashboards display preset and customised reports that draw on multiple NSW Health data sources. Tailor charts to your needs, share insights, and monitor trends over time. Charting includes multi-location comparisons and peer group benchmarking to identify possible improvement areas.
EDWARD, NSW Health’s Enterprise Data Warehouse, provides integrated, near real-time information from multiple health systems to support a focus on patient safety.
For example, EDWARD data is used to generate hospital-acquired complication (HAC) reports, which present information on complications that occur during a patient’s hospital stay and are potentially preventable with optimal care. By highlighting high-risk areas, HAC reports show where complications are occurring so health services can target improvement efforts.
Report designer enables you to create and share run charts, control charts, and process control charts from your own data.
Improvement projects is a team-based tool for running a project in one place. It includes access management, driver diagrams, Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles, measures, charts, chat room, and supporting documents.
Death review is a screening tool. It supports quality assurance by assessing the care a patient received before their death, evaluating whether that care was appropriate or could have been provided differently and using the data to improve future care.
Morbidity and mortality is a team-based meeting tool that records clinical reviews of patient care and the actions that follow. It includes access management, meeting schedules, case review forms, a form designer, diagrams, charts, actions logs, resources, and a chat room.
NSW Health staff report clinical incidents, near misses and complaints in the statewide incident management system. QIDS shows near real-time incident data and uses charting and search tools to help users monitor clinical incident data and prioritise areas for improvement. Users can compare this data with other outcomes data, such as hospital admission data, in Dashboards to strengthen insights.
MatIQ delivers near real-time maternal and newborn data to NSW public hospital maternity services. These insights include current outcomes, trends over time, clinical variation, and outcome measures that support improvement in maternity care.
Quality Audit Reporting System (QARS)
QARS helps you to collect data to understand how care and services are delivered and where it can be improved. It provides a consistent approach to capture audit data across NSW Health so you can:
To arrange access, contact your local QARS administrator.
Login to QARS (NSW Health login required)
QARS has 4 modules:
Audit: Design a questionnaire, schedule an audit, collect data, and develop an action plan in response to the results. Run audits locally or statewide to measure compliance or support improvement. Audits also support accreditation against the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards.
Organisational survey: Design a questionnaire, send it by email or SMS to collect responses from your chosen audience. Survey results are shared across the health service. Use surveys to measure patient experience, assess the safety of care and support improvement activities.
Survey: Design a questionnaire and send it by email or SMS to collect responses from your chosen audience. Results stay private, so choose this option for confidential of sensitive topics. Use surveys to measure patient experience, assess safety and support improvement activities.
ReACT supports the statewide response to safety issues with medicines, medical devices and biological agents. Our Therapeutics Safety team uses it to assess alerts from the Therapeutic Goods Administration. The team then sends safety communications to NSW Health services, so they can manage the risk locally. Health services may also receive audits or surveys through QARS to help assess and manage these risks.