Department of Health

Community health services reporting incidents - advice

Key messages

  • All registered community health services should be reporting incidents to the Department of Health through the Victorian Health Incident Management System 2 (VHIMS 2) Minimum Dataset (MDS) or transitioning to reporting to the VHIMS 2 MDS.
  • All integrated community health services are required to continue reporting incidents into VHIMS 2 MDS.
  • The department is developing a pathway for critical incident notifications from the VHIMS 2 MDS with a phased implementation expected to commence in late October 2022.
  • Until the pathway is operational, community health services are required to continue to manually report critical incidents via the relevant regional health incident reporting inbox.

Many registered community health services in Victoria have commenced reporting incidents to the Department of Health using the Victorian Health Incident Management System 2 (VHIMS 2) Minimum Dataset (MDS), with the remainder expected to transition by the end of 2022.

The department is currently developing a pathway to enable critical incident notifications to occur from the VHIMS 2 MDS, eliminating the need for community health services to submit manual reports for these incidents.

While this work is progressing, community health services are required to continue submitting manual reports via the Health incident report form in accordance with the former Health Incident Reporting InstructionExternal Link .

A phased implementation of the critical incident reporting pathway is expected to commence in late October 2022. It is expected that all registered community health services will have implemented the new pathway and cease manual reporting by the end of 2022.

Note: This advice applies to reporting of both health (Department of Health) and human services (Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH)) funded services which are required to report incidents under the Health Incident Reporting Instruction.

Manual incident reports via the blue formExternal Link are to be sent to the relevant regional incident reporting inbox:

Reviewed 18 November 2022

Health.vic

Resources

Contact details

Victorian Health Information Management System

vhims2@dhhs.vic.gov.au

Contact details

Client Incident Management System

Phone 1300 024 863
CIMS@dhhs.vic.gov.au
Client Incident Management System

Contact details

For more information about community health services incident reporting arrangements, email the department’s Primary and Community Health Unit.

Primary and Community Health Unit

partnerships.primary@dhhs.vic.gov.au
Was this page helpful?