Moving towards meaningful local population health data: The service provider perspective

Abstract

Increasingly, primary care services are required to use data to assess their local population's health needs and plan services. This paper reports focus group discussions of service providers' perceived current practice, issues and needs related to obtaining and using data for planning services in two local government areas of Melbourne. Six groups were conducted with nominees from two municipal councils, four divisions of general practice, three community health services, three hospital networks and eight community organizations. Two groups were conducted with planners and data providers from the Department of Human Services, Victoria. The 66 participants had a broad range of experience in using data to assess local population health needs. Participants reported that issues limiting the use of data related to: access to data (lack of awareness, contacting the right person, poor communication between data providers and users, resource constraints, lack of central access); gaps in data; quality of data (inconsistent definitions and collection, currency, ties to funding); applicability of data (unfriendly format, problems with aggregated versus small area data, non-matching data sets, lack of contextual information); and support for data use in local population health planning. If local population needs assessment is to lead to better health outcomes, service providers need access to high quality data presented in formats that are applicable to their communities. They also need practicable planning methods, skills training and support in using data for local population needs assessment and service planning.