Princess Alexandra Hospital is one of Australia’s leading tertiary referral teaching hospitals and has a bed platform of 1133 beds. The hospital provides care in most major adult specialties including acute medical, surgical, mental health, cancer, rehabilitation and allied health services. The hospital is home to many state-wide services including the Queensland Spinal Cord Injuries Service and the Queensland Liver and Renal Transplant Services.
The hospital is part of Metro South Hospital and Health Service which provides health care to a population of approximately 1.1 million people through its network of 5 hospitals. All the hospitals have become digital hospitals with the successful roll-out of a fully Integrated Electronic Medical Record (ieMR) across the organisation.
The health service is experiencing the same challenges that health services are experiencing worldwide. This includes the need to maintain activity levels while balancing the need to provide access to emergency, elective and outpatient care for patients.
With the implementation of the ieMR there was an opportunity to maximise the use of digital information to actively manage patient flow across the pre-hospital, hospital and community environment.
A command centre or Patient Access and Coordination Hub (PACH) was established to actively manage patient flow and access. The PACH is staffed by senior ambulance paramedics and nursing staff who have real time visibility of patient flows across the health service and the authority manage patient flows to hospitals and within the hospital network.
The digital displays used in the centre were developed by in house business analysts and applications development specialists in collaboration with the frontline staff in the emergency departments and hospital based patient flow units. These digital displays provide real time information that facilitates active and appropriate decision making that optimises both patient care and patient flow.
The benefits of the centre include improved quality of care through faster access to accurate and timely medical information and improved quality of care through improved patient flows.
The presentation will discuss the drivers for the change, the challenges experienced in delivering digital displays, the benefits realised and the longer term development with respect to decision support.
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