Digitising Patient Flow – Phase two

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Initiative Type
System Improvement
Status
Plan
Added
Last updated

Summary

Managing patient flow is critical to the safe and effective delivery of care for Queenslanders. The rollout of the integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR) creates opportunities through digital solutions to identify barriers to patient flow. This allows for early intervention and improved visibility of patient delays and bottlenecks, at scale. By 2020, 80 per cent of Queensland Health hospital patients will be cared for using the ieMR. Once implemented, the Digitising Patient Flow (DPF) project could reach all of these patients.

Implementation sites

The Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) has been identified as the pilot site due to the hospital’s infrastructure, resources, stakeholder involvement, advanced understanding and knowledge of the ieMR, demonstrated experience in translating digital clinical tools into practice and cultural readiness.

Partnerships

This project is led by the Healthcare Innovation and Transformation Excellence Collaboration (HITEC) team, Clinical Excellence Division’s Healthcare Improvement Unit and in partnership with the PAH. A Strategic Advisory Committee established in phase one will continue to provide strategic advice and guidance for the life of the project. In addition, a Focus Working Group and Statewide Governance will be established to provide guidance and ensure the proposed solution is scalable and sustainable across the state.

Key dates
Jul 2018
Jun 2019

Aim

The DPF project aims to deliver integrated digital information solutions to improve the flow of patients, leveraging existing tools, converting and improving them in the digital health environment. Phase two of the project aims to deliver a digital information solution to identify barriers in patient flow in the near real time leveraging the ieMR and other integrated systems minimising additional clinician burden, and workflow changes.

Benefits

The data collected will assist with strategic decision making and support the reduction of both inpatient length of stays and adverse outcomes associated with prolonged hospital stays. The benefits of delivering information solutions to improve the flow of patients in a digital environment are:

  • Providing visibility of bottlenecks and barriers to patient flow.
  • Allowing for early targeted intervention assisting with the reduction of patient delays and length of stay.
  • Embedding a sustainable escalation and monitoring process for patients with delays in their care.
  • Improving hospital efficiency and patient outcomes.
  • Improving the patient and carer experience.
  • Improving team communication, care planning and care coordination processes.

Background

This project is an opportunity to build on current tools, such as “Waiting for What” (WfW) and “Watching Our Waits” (WoW), and develop an automated solution to capture waiting times, barriers to patient flow, establish flags and create trended reports. The DPF project is separated into two phases. Phase one of the project was the scoping and feasibility study and phase two is focused on the solutions development and implementation at a pilot site.

Phase one of the DPF project included an in-depth gap analysis and a scoping and feasibility assessment. Phase one established the feasibility to build a digital solution leveraging the ieMR and other integrated systems to provide retrospective and near real time data for clinical and strategic decision making around patient journey time points and waiting reasons. Phase two, directed by the outcomes of phase one, builds on the work and brings forward the recommendations.

The approach to phase two of the project has been informed by the outcomes of phase one and will be delivered iteratively across stages and deliverables for three tiers of the digitising patient flow solution.

Further Reading

What is the Healthcare Innovation and Transformation Excellence Collaboration (HITEC)?

 

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Key contact

Monika Ciurej / Joshua McRae
Principal Project Officer / Clinical Technical Advisor
Healthcare Improvement Unit
(07) 3443 8014
HITEC@health.qld.gov.au

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