Healthcare Events

The Healthcare Events (HCE) contains healthcare event summaries that are derived from events reported to the National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) and is restricted to hospital events. It allows data from other sources to be available where and when it could be important.

The purpose of the HCE service is to inform health providers of any hospital admissions that may be important when making clinical decisions about individual patient care.

The event summary includes:

• your NHI number
• the hospital you were in,
• the dates you were in hospital, and
• the principal diagnosis causing admission to hospital.

There is a field in the National Minimum Dataset that can prevent a summary from passing to the MWS when absolute confidentiality is required.

Like the NHI and MWS, HCE contains information of operational-level significance, and the responsibility for maintaining the HCE rests with hospitals throughout NZ.

Doctors in hospitals have access to HCE, to review any previous hospital admissions when they are treating patients.  Doctors can then contact the appropriate hospital to get further details of any admissions that may be relevant. 

Work is underway to give GPs access to HCE. Currently this is not widely available primary care.