A Proposed Approach to Investigate Whether Postgraduate Health Care Management Education in Australian Universities Facilitates the Development of Informatics Competencies

Competencies have emerged as being important in healthcare. AIDH has health informatics competencies and ACHSM has health service management competencies but as health care is rapidly changing, it is important that the required competencies continue to evolve. The aim is to investigate whether postgraduate health care management education in Australian universities facilitates the development of informatics competencies. The proposed approach followed the NWCPHP ‘Steps Used to Effectively Map Preexisting Courses to Competency Sets’ to map the health informatics competency statements against the ACHSM accredited and RACMA recognised, postgraduate health care management programs offered domestically in Australia. The initial results show that only 10% of the AHICF competencies were fully addressed, 12% of the AHICF competencies were mostly addressed, 28% were partially addressed, and 50% of the AHICF competencies were not addressed at all. The proposed course competency mapping approach demonstrates that there is a need to revisit the informatics competencies taught in postgraduate health care management programs in Australia.