Highlights
During 2010–11, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare saw the culmination of work in the following areas of activity:
Information for policy and related purposes
- supply of performance indicator data and associated data quality statements, and development of new and improved performance indicators required for Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reporting
- launch of the MyHospitals website
- launch of the biennial Indigenous report and web observatory
- release of What works to overcome Indigenous disadvantage 2009–10: key learnings and gaps in the evidence, the first Closing the Gap Clearinghouse evaluation report
New developments and renewal
- development of the new Specialist Homelessness Services collection
- pilot testing of the draft Mental Health Interventions Classification using a range of data collection methodologies, including iPads
- production of the first analysis of information on patients with dementia from the new Aged Care Funding Instrument, and on older people leaving hospital assisted by the Transition Care Program
- completion of a review of the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Services National Minimum Data Set
- revision of the presentation of data in the Cancer in Australia 2010: an overview publication and its companion Cancer in Australia 2010: in brief publication
- production of user-friendly, accessible online snapshots of information and statistics on asthma and on male health
- an independent stakeholder review of Australian Hospital Statistics publications to further develop the AIHW's suite of hospitals products
Quality and standards
- development of an on-line hospitals data validation tool, Validata®, to improve timeliness and quality of national hospital statistics products
- development of methodologies and infrastructure that allow increasingly large and complex data linkage projects to be undertaken
- promulgation of data standards throughout the health and community services data communities
- release of the National Indicator Catalogue containing all COAG performance indicators and their specifications
Further information on these highlights is provided in the 'In brief' section and in Chapter 1 Our performance and Chapter 3 Our operating units.