The inaugural Australian Harkness Alumni Seminar was held at the Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra on Thursday 4 November 2010.  A new initiative for the returning Australian Harkness Fellows in Health Care Policy and Practice, the aim is to highlight the Harkness Fellows findings and to enable them to engage with policy makers and researchers working in their field, as well as to promote the Harkness Fellowship and network the Alumni.

 The inaugural event highlighted the work of Martin Gallagher the 09/10 Harkness Fellow who has done some interesting (and timely) work in the US at Yale on public reporting on hospital outcomes.  

Attendance was by invitation only and included Harkness Alumni, leading policy makers, executives and expert researchers in the field of performance reporting. There were about 110 attendees and many people had flown in from around the country (including state health department senior staff).

The feedback from policy makers in attendance was that the talks about "Performance Reporting" were very informative and useful for their current work.

Thanks to the DoHA, particularly  Graeme Head , the Chief Executive of the Health Reform Transition Office for co-hosting the event and to the Commonwealth Fund and the NSW Bureau of Health Information for their sponsorship.

 The speakers presentations can be viewed below:

US Public Reporting of Hospital Outcomes – Application to Australia? – Dr Martin Gallagher, Senior Research Fellow, The George Institute for International Health and 09/10 Australian Harkness Fellow

National Performance Reporting - Mr Graeme Head, Health Reform Transition Office
                     
Dutch Health Care Performance Reports - Professor Gert Westert - Professor of Health Services Research, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) &
Tilburg University, The Netherlands 

Performance Monitoring Goes Public -  Dr Diane Watson, CEO, Bureau of Health Information, NSW

Monitoring Safety & Quality Against Standards - Professor Chris Baggoley, CE, The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) 

Performance Reporting from the Patient's Perspective - Dr Karen Luxford, Director, Patient-Based Care, Clinical Excellence Commission and Harkness Alumni Convenor 

The event concluded with a short presentation on the Harkness Fellowship and a Harkness Alumni Dinner.