The effective management of health records should lead to effective and intentional health reporting, which includes report design, distribution, and analysis of the program’s health services and data. Health reports inform internal and external key stakeholders of the program’s health trends and status of services. Reporting should also include completing all required federal, state, local, tribal, and regional reports.

Tips and Strategies for Health Reporting

• Identify the necessary reports to inform all key stakeholders of the program’s health information and data. These internal and external stakeholders can include:
  • Program administrators and leaders
  • Staff
  • Families
  • Governing board
  • Policy or parent committees
  • Policy Council
  • Health Services Advisory Committee
  • Community health organizations
  • Legislators and policymakers
• Become familiar with required federal, state, local, tribal, regional, and program-specific reports and timelines. These include but are not limited to:
  • Program Information Report
  • Immunization reports
  • Chronic absence reports
  • Incident reports, including accident and injury reports, and communicable disease exposure and outbreak reports
• Consider these questions for the intended audiences of the data and reports:
  • What data is appropriate and needs to be included?
  • What is the audience’s health literacy and familiarity with the data?
  • How can the data be best understood by the intended audience?
  • Is the data presented in a way in an engaging way for the audience?
  • What is the desired outcome for the data?
• Use the health data, reports, and the analysis of the data in the program’s overall planning and continuous quality improvement cycle to support individualized and responsive quality health services.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023