How The Queen Elizabeth Hospital lowered affected person waitlist instances by 71% with digital affected person pathways – Healthcare IT Information

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, has lowered how lengthy sufferers have to attend for his or her endoscopy or colonoscopy procedures by way of digital affected person pathways. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Since 2008, the 303-bed educating hospital has supplied care to endoscopy sufferers by way of its Direct Entry Colonoscopy (DAC) programme. This programme seeks to offer accelerated care entry to eligible, lower-risk sufferers

Over time, the DAC has seen a major enhance in demand. Because of this, the workload concerned with conducting threat assessments has gone up considerably whereas the quantity of calls, coupled with triage time, has additionally swelled. The added stress has led to longer waitlists and in some situations, underutilisation of theatres, the hospital famous.

To deal with these points, TQEH labored with Personify Care in 2021 to ship the programme through digital affected person pathways. 

After being referred to the programme, sufferers are despatched an invite to their digital pathway the place they’ll full medical threat assessments and entry personalised well being info. 

“This enabled appropriate sufferers to self-serve, preserving workers time to coordinate look after these with extra advanced wants,” Jane Andrews, a drugs professor and gastroenterologist at TQEH, shared.

In accordance with a media launch, because the introduction of digital affected person pathways, wait instances for sufferers have significantly “decreased by 71%” and reserving surgical procedures could possibly be executed “three weeks upfront”. Telephone calls have additionally “decreased by 44%” with shortened name durations. 

“[W]e’ve been capable of get sufferers booked inside a couple of days of receiving their referrals. Earlier than, it could take weeks, so it is made an actual distinction to us,” Sharon Gillespie, a medical nurse at TQEH, attested.

THE LARGER TREND

After rolling out the answer within the hospital’s endoscopy unit, tailor-made affected person pathways have been developed for every of TQEH’s specialities. 

The implementation of digital pathways is a part of a broader collaboration between Personify Care and the Central Adelaide Native Well being Community, which TQEH is part of. Final yr, the Royal Adelaide Hospital, additionally a part of the Community, reported seeing lowered elective surgical procedure cancellations and workload pressures upon its adoption of Personify Care’s platform.