The Health Roundtable

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The Health Roundtable Limited is a membership organisation structured as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. The aims of the organisation are:

To provide opportunities for health executives to learn how to achieve Best Practice in their organistions;
To collect, analyse and publish information comparing organisations and identifying ways to improve operational practices, and
To promote interstate and international collaboration and networking amongst health organisation executives.

In keeping with the focus on self-improvement, members are governed by an 'honour code' which requires that no member shall criticise the performance of other member hospitals, or use any of the information to the detriment of a fellow member.

No external distribution of data or conclusions based on Health Roundtable workshops or data is made without the unanimous consent of the Board of Directors.

To learn all about The Health Roundtable, download this document.

The Health Roundtable Limited is a member-owned collaborative organisation, structured as a company limited by guarantee. Each year, the company's accounts are audited and provided to Australian regulatory authorities.

Annual reports of the organisation are stored in the website library, and can be accessed through the links below:

Use of Health Roundtable Data For Data Research

The Health Roundtable promotes research into improvements in health care delivery. We can make selected data from our inpatient database available to qualified researchers.

The database consists of statistical records of inpatient episodes including diagnosis and procedure codes, length of stay, DRG, procedure dates, and basic patient demographic data.

Extracts from the database are available to researchers who agree to abide by the following requirements:

1. All research project requests must be approved by the General Manager of The Health Roundtable in advance, using the principles of the Health Roundtable Honour Code to assess the potential benefits versus risks to members. The Honour Code requires that the data not be used to the detriment of any member organisation.

2. Data provided to researchers will have the identity of the specific hospitals in the dataset disguised to avoid the possibility of disclosure. Only the General Manager of The Health Roundtable will have the ability to decode the information for the benefit of the member organisations.

3. All research products are to be circulated to member organisations for comment prior to any submission for external publication. Any requests by members to remove their data from the analysis must be honoured, and any request by an organisational member to terminate the research project will be forwarded to the Board of Directors for resolution. The Board will consider all submissions regarding the dispute, and will make a final, binding decision regarding the use of Roundtable data in the project.

4. All research must acknowledge the source of data as The Health Roundtable, and the final versions of the research must be freely available to all member organisations at no cost to them or to The Health Roundtable.

5. Researchers must provide a free, non-exclusive license to The Health Roundtable to use the methodologies developed as part of the research to enable the Roundtable to continue or expand the research to other member organisations or time periods. A copy of any algorithms and computer source code written to conduct the analysis shall be submitted to The Health Roundtable when the research products are circulated to member organisations prior to submission for external publication.

6. Data provided to researchers by The Health Roundtable must be used only for the purpose identified in the research application. No secondary usage is permitted without separate approval. All research is to be completed within 12 months of receipt of the data.

For an application form, please click here.

The Health Roundtable inpatient episode data base is one of the largest non-governmental collections of hospital operational activity in the world, now adding over 3 million inpatient records per year for over 70 public hospital facilities across Australia and New Zealand. Data are available from 1996 to 2007 for 15 of the member organisations and from 2003 to 2007 for over 30 member organisations. The database has a wealth of diagnosis, procedure, and demographic data linked to hospital stays, and provides a mechanism to track episodes of the same patient over time for many member organisations. (However, there are no direct patient identifiers in the datasets.)

Patient Safety

The Health Roundtable has focused on improving patient safety across our Australian and New Zealand membership for the past eight years, highlighting innovations in clinical governance, safe practice techniques, and learning from sentinel events. Programs ranging from improved infection control practices to improved hand-over practices at each shift are underway at most of our member organisations.

Our Patient Safety Roundtable in 2008 featured Dr Raj Behal, the Senior Patient Safety Officer from Rush University Hospital in Chicago, USA. Twenty-six health services participated in the Roundtable discussions. Dr Behal discussed a systematic way to review mortality rates in hospitals, which the Roundtable has now developed to assist our members. He also provided a 9-question worksheet to analyse each hospital death to identify factors which could be addressed. This approach differs from traditional "root cause analysis" since it looks for a variety of contributing factors, rather than a single cause of death.

RajBehal

Dr Behal addressing The Health Roundtable in Broadbeach, Queensland on 22 August 2008.

Member health services are now able to compare their mortality rates for specific diseases, age groups, and procedures to identify issues and innovative practices using a robust risk-adjusted approach based on over 6 million patient episodes.

Members also have access to a library of innovations under way at other health services, and to a collection of sentinel events and interventions to anticipate potential problems before they occur.