The Victorian Health Incident Management System is now fully operational and will provide a system for reporting and monitoring any errors that occur within the hospital system.

 

The VHIMS will allow a greater depth of reporting across all levels of incidents, rather than just those deemed as ‘sentinel’.

 

A sentinel event is defined as a relatively infrequent, clear-cut adverse event that occurs independently of a patient’s condition, commonly reflecting hospital system and process deficiencies, and resulting in unnecessary outcomes for the patient. VHIMS data will provide the capacity for lessons learned within one organisation to be shared with others. A key component of VHIMS will be the delivery of effective information sharing mechanisms so that health services can benefit from analysis of statewide data.

 

Previously, only a wide range of high severity incidents that impacted on patients was being reported to the Victorian Health Department. The VHIMS will provide a mechanism to report and pool lower severity clinical incident data from across the state in a standardised way.

 

Sources of VHIMS data collection include:

  • all Victorian public health services;
  • 39 registered community health centres;
  • Ambulance Victoria;
  • Royal District Nursing Service;
  • Ballarat District Nursing and Healthcare;
  • 14 bush nursing centres;
  • Forensicare; and
  • 5 Incorporated Residential Aged Care Services.

All these agencies are required to send de-identified clinical incident data to the Department of Health for aggregation and analysis.