Data Resource Profile: Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Data Connect

Abstract

Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) Data Connect is a single platform for facilitating access to a range of Victorian health data sources, allowing researchers, analysts and policy makers to bring a rigorous, data-driven lens to questions related to health services and patterns of cancer care.It has been developed in Australia since 2017 to connect general practice databases with data from hospitals and clinical cancer registries, and involves nearly 3 million patients spanning the years 1996-2021.It is updated on a yearly basis to incorporate more recent datasets, and is being expanded to include additional health services datasets across the state, including from non-metropolitan hospitals, VCCC Alliance members and clinical registries.In this paper we provide high-level descriptive statistics of the data sources, summarizing representativeness, data quality and overall sizes of patient cohorts.As a specific example we then focus on general cancer statistics, to illustrate the utility of this resource.Cancer patients interact with the health system through using many different health services, with primary care playing a critical role from initial presentation through to survivorship and end-of-life care. 1,2Each health service has its own corresponding data collection systems, so linkage is critical to understand how patients interact with the system across their entire journey of care. 3n Australia, health data linkage is challenging due to different parts of the health system being the responsibility of different jurisdictions at state and federal levels, as well as due to differing data standards and systems. 4Since primary care is usually the first point of contact that patients have with the health system, 5 including prior to a diagnosis of cancer, General Practice (GP) data are a key component of research in this area.The intended audience of this paper is researchers interested in data, research and analysis related to health service use. Key Features• Data Connect has been established as a data linkage resource that brings together Australian General Practice (GP), Metropolitan Hospital and Cancer Registry data sources to enable researchers to address questions in health services research related to the entire patient continuum of care.• This resource includes patient-level de-identified data on over 3 million Victorian primary care patients aged over 18 years of age, with GP data covering the period 1996-2021 and hospital data covering the years 2006-21.• Data have been linked across health services as this is a requirement for understanding patients' journey of care, in particular for cancer patients, who interact with many different parts of the health care system, often starting at primary care.• The resource includes rich clinical and administrative data from hospital presentations and admissions, GP encounters, prescriptions, pathology test results and observations and cancer diagnoses.• Researchers interested in using this resource should contact Data Connect at [https://vcccalliance.

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