Informatics
This page gives an overview of the teams within the Healthcare Commission’s Informatics Group.
The following teams work within our Informatics Group:
- Screening, Methods and Research
- Analytic Support
- Performance Ratings
- Accessible Information
- Information Knowledge Management
- Indicators and Measurement
- Information Services
Screening, Methods and Research
In addition to developing new ways of interpreting the information we hold, this team provides the data analysis and statistical support that are essential to our assessments of how well healthcare providers are performing.
We use this information to pinpoint failures and successes and to provide a snapshot of performance in particular areas of healthcare. It also helps us to identify potential problems before they occur.
Analytic Support
It is vitally important that the Healthcare Commission's work is accurate and that all our judgements about healthcare are based on high-quality evidence. Our three analytic support teams make sure that this is the case. They determine the questions that need to be asked during an investigation and ensure that the right information is available, with a robust audit trail.
They also manage a classification system that allows information gathered by our regional operations teams to be easily retrieved and analysed.
Performance Ratings
The Healthcare Commission gives an individual rating to NHS organisations each year, and this is the department responsible for developing new ways of grading them in line with national targets. They also calculate and publish the final ratings.
Accessible information
The Accessible Information team looks at how information produced by the Healthcare Commission should be made available in a useful and clear way, so that patients and the public can make informed decisions about their healthcare.
The team work closely with other teams across the Commission and many external organisations, to ensure that the data is presented in a user-friendly way and through a range of different channels - from printed publications through to websites. They also work directly with patient and public groups to ensure they develop products that are meaningful to them.
Information Knowledge Management
The intelligence we gather is only useful if it supports and empowers our staff in doing their jobs, enabling them to target their efforts and focus on the right things at the right time, in a similar way for the public or private sector.
The information knowledge management (IKM) role is to ensure we maintain a central store of data and a single point where information about its use, quality and fitness for purpose is available across the organisation.
We drive further improvement in the system by making our information available to different audiences. The information must be relevant, useful and accessible to them and at many different levels: by organisation, condition, sector, topic and across pathways of care.
Indicators and Measurement
The team plays a key role in the annual health check, the Healthcare Commission's system for assessing and rating the performance of NHS healthcare organisations in England.
We do this by developing and delivering:
- Our assessment of the existing commitments and national priories as outlined in the NHS operating framework (previously, from 2005/06 to 2007/08, the team developed and delivered our assessment of the Department of Health's existing and new national targets).
- The overall quality of services part of the annual rating, including national, regional and trust level analysis.
We are also responsible for developing and delivering a set of:
- Benchmarked vital signs indicators for PCTs, to support their commissioning function.
- Benchmarked indicators to assist trusts in signing off their core standards declaration.
- Additional benchmarked indicator products relating to specific services or pathways of care that contribute to an organisation's local intelligence and capacity for improvement.
Information Services
Information Services develop innovative IT systems that help the Healthcare Commission achieve its objectives efficiently and cost-effectively. For example, in autumn 2006 the team developed the annual health check website. This allows people to search for a wide range of information on the performance of their local NHS healthcare provider and compare it with other local NHS trusts and also against performance at a national level.
A recently launched, state-of-the art customer relationship management system is just one of the many other examples of how they are constantly improving our IT infrastructure.
