Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity) Declaration 2020 (No. 1)

I, BRENDAN MURPHY, delegate of the Minister for Health, make this declaration under section 124X of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

Dated: 8 May 2020

Prof. Brendan Murphy

Chief Medical Officer

Department of Health

Contents

PART 1     PRELIMINARY 3

1    Name 3

2.   Commencement 3

3.   Authority 3

4.   Repeal 3

5.   Schedule                                       3

Schedule       4

Part 1 Preliminary

1.                     Name

This Declaration is the Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity) Declaration 2020 (No. 1).

2.                       Commencement

This Declaration commences on the day after it is registered on the Federal Register of Legislation.

3.                       Authority

This Declaration is made under subsection 124X(1) of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

4.                       Cessation

 This Declaration will cease to be in force at the end of 5 years after the date on which it is signed.

5.                       Schedule

The quality assurance activity described in the Schedule to this Declaration is, to the extent that the quality assurance activity relates to health services provided in Australia, declared to be a quality assurance activity to which Part VC of the Health Insurance Act 1973 applies.

Schedule Declaration of quality assurance activity

1 Name of activity:
 

The Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons’ Cardiac Surgery Monitoring Program.

2 Description of activity:

The Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons’ (ANZSCTS) Cardiac Surgery Monitoring Program (the Program) collates data in an established database and compares the results of adult cardiac surgical procedures and outcomes against an agreed set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The analysis of these results takes into account a patient’s risk of complication and the surgical procedures, and methods used to achieve the most successful patient outcomes.

This declaration applies to the peer review and quality assurance analysis process, the outcomes of specific quality assurance investigations, any identifying data received and follow up actions with individual surgeons undertaken as part of the Program, and includes:

1. The general peer review and quality assurance processes of the Program, being the data used in the functionality of the process, the procedures involved in the data collection process and the conclusions of that process; and
2. The specific peer review and quality assurance process as applied to individual instances.

The activity is undertaken by the Australasian Cardiac Surgery Research Institution (ACSRI), which is a not-for-profit organisation established by the ANZSCTS for the purpose of undertaking research.

ACSRI provides regular disclosures of de-identified information using data from the activity in Annual Reports which show detailed unit comparisons for cardiac procedures performed in the calendar year. The published data compares results against the KPIs. Extracts of reports are provided to the Departments of Health and hospitals in participating jurisdictions.

This declaration follows the protection provided in the previous activity declared as QAA 2/2015 and will likely encourage a greater level of participation than the previously declared activity.