Department of Health

Each year the Department of Health reviews the data elements and format of its key health services data collections.

This review - the annual change process - seeks to ensure that health data collected in Victoria:

  • supports the department's state and national reporting obligations
  • assists planning and policy development
  • reflects changes in hospital funding and service provision arrangements for the coming financial year
  • incorporates appropriate feedback from data providers on improvements.

The annual change process is managed by the Health Services Data and is governed by the Department's Annual Changes Governance Committee (ACGC).

The annual change process

  1. The first step is a call for proposals. Submitted proposals undergo an initial review by departmental staff to ensure quality and completeness of the documentation, prior to submission to the ACGC.
  2. Each proposal is assessed against a set of best practice and standard information management principles.
  3. Following initial consideration by the ACGC, and any resulting amendment to the documents, all accepted proposals are compiled into a proposals document - one for each data collection.
  4. The proposals documents are distributed to all Victorian hospitals (through the HDSS distribution list), patient management system suppliers known to have Victorian clients, and to a range of industry bodies.
  5. The proposals documents outline the proposed changes to each data collection and are used to stimulate discussion within the health industry.

Further information

Annual changes are approved by the Deputy Secretary, Commissioning and system improvement based upon recommendations by the ACGC.

The approved changes are published as specifications for revisions no later than 31 December each year for implementation by 1 July of the following year. You can find out more by downloading the following documents:

Notification of any additional changes is published in the HDSS Bulletin.

Proposals and specifications

Specifications for revisions to data collections for 2023-24

Proposals for revisions to data collections for 2023-24

This year, to avoid duplication, we have prepared a separate proposals document. It provides information on proposals that relate to items reported in more than one of the above data collections.

The document - Proposals for revisions across multiple data collections for 2023-24 - must be considered alongside the relevant Proposals for revisions to the ESIS, VAED, VEMD and VINAH.

Please use the feedback form (below) to provide comments and feedback by 5pm Friday 21 October 2022.

Archive

For last year's revision, visit Annual changes archive. For earlier years, visit the HDSS archiveExternal Link .

Reviewed 08 May 2023

Health.vic

Contact details

For information and advice about standards, specifications and data quality processes for the VAED, VEMD, ESIS, AIMS, VINAH and VCDC. 

HDSS Helpdesk Department of Health

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