Metro North Patient Access Coordination Hub (MN PACH): Automated Inter-Hospital Transfer Register (AIR)

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Initiative Type

Model of Care

Status

Deliver

Added

08 May 2018

Last updated

21 March 2022

Summary

Metro North Hospital and Health Service (MNHHS) Patient Access Coordination Hub (PACH) has designed and produced a live Automated Inter-Hospital Transfer (IHT) Register information technology solution, known as AIR, which has now become integral in the timely transfer of patients into and out of the MNHHS.

AIR, facilitates real time information transparency between MNHHS and other statewide HHS, rolled out to all MNHHS facilities in November 2017 and sustained in March 2018. AIR auto collates all online Inter-hospital transfer referrals submitted to MNHHS facilities, following the journey from referral to completion of the transfer. MN PACH maintain and monitor a centralised register of all referrals for patients identified pending transfer “in and out” MNHHS.

Key dates

Jan 2016

Jan 2018

Implementation sites

Metro North Hospital and Health Service

Aim

AIR aims to reduce the time taken period for the Inter Hospital Transfer (IHT) process to occur by replacing individually transcribed spread sheets, held by bed management teams in each facility. This can inadvertently lead to delay in the awareness of patient transfer and may inadvertently result in missed opportunity to activate early intervention.

Benefits

Augments current business intelligence capabilities of MN PACH by facilitating interactive analytics with segmented business data and advanced visualisation tools to better support decision making.
Proactively informs a targeted and coordinated HHS based strategy for the prevention of patient delays in access to the right health facility.

Background

This initiative was based on directed timeframes as per Patient Centered Emergency Access Health Service Directive Protocol for Hospital Transfers of the non-critical patient and MNHHS Chief Executive directive.

Evaluation and Results

As a result of the AIR IT solution, MN PACH and MNHHS is now data rich with its first centralised data set. The AIR data is now seen as a source of truth for IHT across MNHHS and is essential in service provision and planning. MNHHS patients have experienced a reduction in delay and repatriation from six to three days, whilst the facilities have experienced both financial and bed day efficiencies. Utilising the AIR IT solution, MNHHS have successfully embed the MNHHS IHT Escalation Process which has received endorsement from all Chief Operations Officers (COOs) across Queensland Health and applied across the state.

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