Client success stories

The Department of Health (DHS) was established to help Victorians stay safe and healthy and deliver a world-class health system that leads to better health outcomes for all Victorians. As a department, they are continually looking for ways to improve the health and wellbeing of all Victorians no matter who or where they are. Responsibilities include supporting the Health and Ambulance Services, Mental Health and Ageing portfolios. In addition to this, they’re front and centre of the coronavirus (COVID-19) response and recovery efforts. This has been a challenging period for all Victorians, but DHS remain committed to supporting communities, healthcare workers and the health sector. It’s through these efforts and collaboration they will be able to create a stronger healthcare system focussed on forming better bonds between the department, the healthcare sector, and the people of Victoria. Their vision is to continue to ensure Victoria remains a great place to live, work and play by supporting Victorians to be the healthiest people in the world.

The HealthLinks team at the Victorian Department of Health required a Power BI dashboard, which was to be used by the departmental staff as well as health services participating in the HealthLinks program. The aim of the dashboard is to obtain an up-to-date and accurate profile of activity and characteristics of HealthLinks patients enrolled into the program.

The following key metrics were required when developing the report:

• Total, average and monthly number of enrolled HealthLinks patients
• Total and monthly number of patient exclusions and patient deaths
• Total and monthly number funding conversions for HealthLinks capitation
• Average funding utilisation for enrolled patient cohort
• Inpatient activity and inpatient funding utilisation of enrolled cohort
• Average length of stay, number of presentations to the emergency department (ED), inpatient presentations and non-admitted episodes, number of separations for enrolled patients
• Average enrolment length for enrolled patients

Due to our vast experience in healthcare data and analytics, Ager BI was able to hit the ground running by immediately beginning the build on the HealthLinks Power BI dashboard. The underlying Power Query connected to the multiple departmental datasets such as the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED), Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD) and the Victorian Integrated Non-Admitted Health dataset (VINAH) to import and model the data required to measure and monitor HealthLinks patients. Utilising powerful Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), the dashboard was able to:

• identify enrolled patients
• exclude patients and deaths that did not qualify
• convert funding to the National Weighted Activity Units (NWAU)
• calculate Average Length of Stay (ALOS) and provide number of patients presenting to EE
• patients discharged from admitted care
• display the enrolment length of each patient and benchmark this data against other health services

The Victorian Department of Health benefit from a completed dashboard that is securely accessible by internal department staff and external stakeholders at health services using Power BI Premium capacity licences. The ability to quickly monitor HealthLinks patients and view their characteristics allows the users to quickly make decisions on any patients that need care or that can be discharged from hospital earlier. This enables health services to save a significant amount of money by discharging patients early. Keeping patients out of hospital and providing care in ED or the community provides improved patient care whilst also assisting in financial savings. The dashboard utilises the forecasting functionality of Power BI, which provides an indication of the outcomes of patients based off historical activity, assisting in making critical decisions earlier to improve patient care outcomes.