IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

The HSE hereby invites suitably qualified and experienced service providers to submit tenders to provide a HIPE Data Quality Assessment Tool and Lot 2 Patient Costing and Activity Benchmarking Tool for the Healthcare Pricing Office. This tender has been split into 2 lots. Lot 1 HIPE Data Quality Assessment Tool and Lot 2 Patient Costing and Activity Benchmarking Tool. Tenderers may submit a tender for individual lots or both lots. The deployment of an objective tool to assess data quality would facilitate the implementation of a strategic clinical coding audit and data quality framework. Under Activity Based Funding (ABF), a significant proportion of each hospital’s funding depends on the activity, reported through HIPE. Without an objective tool to assess the data quality, hospitals’ funding may be impacted because of variation in quality of coding, rather than variation in activity performed, leading to inappropriate funding allocation. The proposed tool should allow hospitals to review and improve their own data before submission to the central/ national file, allowing review by coder and by consultant, thereby improving the data quality at source. HIPE collects administrative, demographic and clinical information on acute admitted care in publically funded hospitals. Up to 30 diagnoses and up to 20 procedures are collected and classified per discharge (approx. 1 600 000 discharges per year). The classification (referred to as ICD-10-AM/ACHI/ACS/ICS) allows for approximately 20 000 possible codes for each of the 30 potential diagnoses per discharge and approximately 7 000 codes for each of the 20 potential procedures. A secondary classification is then applied to group discharges into diagnosis related groups (DRGs) that are expected to consume similar levels of resources (referred to as AR DRGs). HIPE data are used extensively in the management of the health service. Uses include activity based funding, performance measurement and quality improvement, in addition to informing policy, international reporting and informing policy. The HIPE system, centrally administered by the HPO, currently includes a suite of in-house built data quality tools including a robust data entry system with in-built checks, a data quality suite including data checking tools to facilitate hospitals checking their own data and an audit tool kit to facilitate chart based audit. However HIPE does not have a tool that facilitates the objective measurement of data quality. The tool should promote better understanding of the coding classification rules. Use of the tool should improve data quality of HIPE data and reduce variation in in quality of coding across hospitals/coders. This project aims to implement a tool to allow hospital based costing accountants to compare their patient level costs against their peers, thereby identifying areas of discrepancy in the quantum of costs, how these costs are allocated or non-compliance with patient costing standards. Hospitals know at overall hospital level, through ABF Benchmarking results, how their overall costs and activity compare against other hospitals. This tool will allow comparison from patient level upwards within their own hospital versus summary DRG for the Peer Hospital to explain why this overall performance exists which will provide opportunity for service and data improvements. The expected data improvements will contribute to improvements in the costing data which is subsequently used to set prices and allocate funding under the activity based funding model. This tool will be available at the hospital and group hospital level, providing opportunities for data quality improvement at source, thereby by closing the continuous improvement cycle. The tool should enable all users to see and understand where costs are being incurred within patient journeys through Irish acute hospitals. Patient Level Costing (PLC) data is a key cornerstone for the effective implementation of the Activity Based Funding (ABF) Programme in the Irish acute hospital setting. A key objective of the ABF Programme is to establish and facilitate an evidence based system of healthcare resourcing that drives transparency, equity and efficiency. As part of this requirement, the availability of this Patient Costing benchmarking tool will provide a clear and transparent cost comparison of information between hospitals with a full drill down capability across all levels of patient care. Patient Costing Benchmarking also allows one hospital to compare themselves with a single peer, peer group or group average, thus leading to a better understanding of cost variation which in turn is a very useful tool in understanding variations in clinical coding and episode complexity. Currently, hospitals do not have tools to compare their patient level costs at Patient Care Area level with their peers, limiting their ability to improve the quality of, or effectively gain intelligence from their costing data. The proposed tool will provide this facility, allowing hospitals to take proactive steps to improve and therefore use and take ownership of their costing information. Improved quality costing data would then be available to the healthcare pricing office, which would improve our ability to set accurate and fair prices for funding allocation.