As a junior nurse, I never imagined that I would be expected to analyse data.

Honestly, mathematics was never a strong suit of mine. With the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, leaders are expected to make swift decisions based on timely and reliable data rather than just based on lived experiences alone.

Data-driven leadership is essential to guide decisions to support positive patient and staff outcomes in managing healthcare service complexities and mitigating risks.

Whether addressing workforce shortages, reducing clinical incidents, or improving education effectiveness, data can track trends, patterns, and connections in large amounts of raw data to assist leaders in making data-informed decisions.

Workforce planning data

In Australia, the nursing profession is the single largest health profession. As such, workforce planning is vital in future-proofing the industry to ensure the alignment of nurse supply with the demand required by the healthcare system to develop a sustainable workforce.

Like many other developed countries, Australia's significant challenges related to demand are being driven by our aging population. Australians live longer and have more complex health concerns, combined with rising costs of technology and treatment and increasing patient and community expectations.

Therefore, decisions made at the government, education, organisation and professional levels must be aligned with what the country needs from nurses in the future.

National level - example

The first workforce report published by Health Workforce Australia (HWA) – titled Health Workforce 2025 – Doctors, Nurses and Midwives (HW2025) (2012) was developed for doctors, nurses and midwives. The reports provide a long-term national workforce forecast.

Particularly, for nurses, HW2025 determined that population health trends, combined with an aging workforce and poor retention rates, would result in an imminent and acute nursing shortage. This prediction is expected to directly impact the community's ability to access healthcare when needed.

HW2025 also uncovered that no single policy or solution would address the predicted shortage and that a multifaceted approach would be required to combat this dire situation.

Subsequently, The Nursing Retention and Productivity Project was initiated as a direct response to the HW2025 findings, which predicted that enhancing nurse retention and productivity would significantly help address projected workforce shortages. This effort is crucial to maintaining community access to healthcare services as needed.

The report's workforce predictions were modelled using the utilisation approach. This means that while the expected change in population size and structure is considered during the projected period, the current trends of service usage and demand are assumed to remain unchanged.

The condition prediction for 2012 and the future models considered:

• Known trends in nurse graduation rates and subsequent transition into employment
• The aging of the current workforce and the demographics of new nurses in the workforce
• Current hours of work, segmented into age and gender cohorts, to gain a greater understanding of changes in hours
• Migration is held constant throughout

Like most data, these data points are variable and dependent on time, service demand, and changes to care delivery. Consequently, HWA acknowledged that findings and recommendations initially outlined in early reports might become outdated over time. It remains committed to ongoing data analysis around these data points to ensure that new information from sources such as:

• AHPRA
• the Australian Government Department of Education
• the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)
• the Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border Protection

Other sources are to be incorporated into updated planning. This approach aims to better predict and future-proof Australia's nursing workforce.

Local level - example

Effective workforce planning ensures safe and appropriate staffing levels, including skill mix, are available to deliver high-quality care to patients. Building an effective workforce requires leaders to utilise evidence-based workforce plans, integrating financial activity and performance data.

Most major healthcare services employ the data platform Power BI, which is considered a game-changer in data analytics. It enables healthcare professionals to collect large amounts of data from various sources and transform them into actionable insights.

By providing real-time data visualisations and analytics, Power BI aids healthcare leaders in making informed, timely decisions. By providing real-time data visualisations and analytics, Power BI supports healthcare leaders in making informed decisions in a timely manner.

Timely decision-making is considered an essential skill in a profession where informed decisions can significantly impact patient outcomes.

To support timely decision-making, healthcare services may utilise platforms like Power BI [Editor's note: Or Ausmed's Workforce Capability System] to review the education needs and/or staffing skill mix to ensure safe, high-quality care within budget constraints.

Addressing these concerns can improve operational efficiency and patient satisfaction.

Education and capability-building data

Clinical incidents and audit results can offer valuable insights into staff knowledge, skills and competence gaps.

Education, training and development can then be appropriately targeted through insights obtained through data analysis; for example, online learning modules and/or simulation can be offered for MET calls or safe administration of medication if data reflects that staff are non-compliant with MET calls or medication administration policy due to an increase in clinical incidents.

Data can be obtained from digital platforms such as RiskMan, Power BI and the organisation's Learning Management Systems (LMS).

Undoubtedly, there is increasing popularity amongst learners for online learning and a visible shift away from traditional modalities such as classroom presentations and in-services. This shift has led to most healthcare services employing an LMS as it provides a platform for learners that is more autonomous, flexible and effective, with the added advantage of tracking education completion rates and results to monitor staff engagement and competence.

Tracking results and data trends can inform leadership and organisation stakeholders to understand which staff need additional training or which standards need greater attention.

Governance and risk data

Data collected through incident reporting systems (Riskman), clinical audits, and patient experience surveys (NPS) are critical governance and quality improvement drivers.

Healthcare leaders can employ root cause analyses (RCA) and dashboard trends (Power BI) to identify areas for improvement and ensure interventions are evidence-based. Embedding these insights into regular clinical governance committee meetings can strengthen transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Aligned with these principles, the Victorian Health Services Performance Monitoring Framework 2024-25 outlines how the Department of Health monitors and supports public healthcare organisations to deliver safe, high-quality care.

The revised framework focuses on:

• Resetting expectations to reflect key clinical governance priorities and promote continuous improvement
• Improves organisation support, whilst maintaining and promoting accountability
• Clarifies performance accountability through specific criteria and clear consequences for underperformance

Notably, the framework includes patient experience as a key performance indicator (KPI), with a benchmark of 95% of patients reporting a positive experience during their hospital admission. This reinforces the need for data-driven, patient-centred clinical governance across the service.

The NPS is a simple yet effective tool for monitoring patient satisfaction and loyalty to the service and their likelihood of recommending the healthcare service to others.

For many healthcare services, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-specific benchmark that offers valuable insights into the patient experience. It supports continuous improvement by highlighting areas for development, enabling timely responses to feedback, and helping drive patient retention, referrals, and sustainable growth.

By continuously monitoring patient experience, organisations can respond proactively to negative trends, build on positive feedback and make informed decisions to improve care.

Challenges associated with data-driven leadership

Despite its many benefits, data-driven leadership comes with many challenges. As digital health systems rapidly evolve, one of the biggest challenges is data privacy; thus, we must consider consumer privacy by securing the collection, storage and sharing of data, aligning with privacy policy and legislation, including:

• Privacy Act 1988 and,
• Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010

Consumer trust is essential to the success of the National Digital Health Strategy. Strong privacy and cybersecurity frameworks are critical to protecting sensitive public data and supporting safe data sharing.

Healthcare leaders must handle public data responsibly, and consumers need to understand their rights. As such, the Australian Digital Health Agency's Cyber Security Centre aims to protect digital health platforms and continually adapts to cybersecurity threats.

Conclusion

Data-driven leadership is no longer optional. It is essential to ensure that healthcare leaders remain proactive rather than reactive. Data supports leaders to understand, measure and improve our initiatives within the rapidly evolving ecosystem.