National Maternity Collection

Purpose

The Laboratory Claims Data Warehouse (Labs) allows the Ministry of Health and DHBs to monitor the primary-care test subsidies.

Content

Labs contains claim and payment information for laboratory tests that have been processed by the HealthPAC General Transaction Processing System (GTPS). It also contains laboratory test information from Pegasus IPA and Medlab South.

As at October 2004, this amounted to over 134 million rows of claim and payment data. Between 1.5 and 2 million are added a month.

Labs was established in 2000 and contains data from July 1997.

Labs contains claim and payment information that has been audited against the HealthPAC Payments system, and some DHBs.

Until late 2003, Labs is known to incorrectly attribute laboratory test costs to DHBs. This happens when the DHB is identified by the domicile codes of the providers who ordered the tests, and some providers order tests from laboratories funded by other DHBs. The error range is from 10 to 15 percent. After the introduction of the Funding DHB field, this data will become accurate.

Labs is unable to report on primary care organisations (PCOs), as up-to-date PCO membership data is not currently maintained.

All attributes are stored as they were at the time of the transaction, that is, they do not reflect current values, unless explicitly stated, for example, ethnicity, gender and geographic information.

For further information about this collection or to request specific datasets or reports, contact the NZHIS Analytical Services team on phone 04 922 1800, fax 04 922 1897, or e-mail inquiries@nzhis.govt.nz, or visit the NZHIS web site www.nzhis.govt.nz.

Monthly.

The Labs database is accessed by authorised NZHIS staff for maintenance, data quality, audit and analytical purposes.

Authorised members of the Ministry of Health and District Health Boards 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.

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.

In 2004 claims, the encrypted NHI number is stored for approximately 88 percent of laboratory test records. (In earlier years, it varied, dropping to as low as 13 percent in 1997 claims.) Identifying information is only held for health providers who request the test and not for the pathologist performing the test.

Summary NBRS data is published on the elective services as part of the Elective Services Patient Flow Indicators (ESPIs), and regular data quality reconciliation reports are available to Districts.

NZHIS releases monthly standard reports for DHBs via the HIN.

Customised datasets or summary reports are available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from Health New Zealand Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

Health New Zealand Analytical Services team also offers a peer review service to ensure that Health New Zealand data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.