Epworth HealthCare and Telstra Health working together to improve the patient experience

Media Release, 13 February 2017

As one of Australia’s largest not-for-profit private healthcare providers with more than 140,000 patient admissions and 90,000 surgeries annually, Epworth HealthCare will utilise Patient Flow Manager to gain greater visibility of key data from multiple hospital IT systems in order to improve patient movement within the hospital.

Epworth Richmond Executive Director, Nicole Waldron, said that Telstra Health’s solution would help staff to have a complete view of patient flow information in near real-time, enabling them to plan patient movement and flow more efficiently across the organisation.

“The current process for managing bed flow across the sites is manual and relies on a series of meetings and conversations between staff about planned or potential discharges. The flow of information can be time consuming, reactive, subject to individual interpretation and sensitivity. As a result of the manual process, there is no real-time or accurate visibility of current bed status across the organisation.

“The ability of Epworth Richmond to see at a glance inpatient bed status is of critical business importance, as bed occupancy impacts on patient flow, discharge planning, patient and visiting medical officer satisfaction as well as revenue management.”

Telstra Health’s Sales and Marketing Director for Health IQ, Dave Piggott, said that Patient Flow Manager combines information from across the hospital’s systems – including inpatient, elective, emergency and outpatient systems – to provide visibility of bed capacity and demand. As Epworth Richmond expands its services and facilities, access to this information is essential both for managing current demand, as well as for predicting and allocating resources for the future.

The clear visibility across patient movement and the ability to capture and analyse trends in patient flow that Patient Flow Manager provides will be critical to the success of Epworth Richmond’s continued growth.

“With Patient Flow Manager in place, Epworth Richmond staff will be able to manage the patient journey within the hospital - from admission to discharge - more efficiently. Staff will know bed capacity and demand in near real-time allowing them to plan for and forecast future demand,” said Mr Piggott.

“As a provider of healthcare technology, our focus is on developing solutions such as Patient Flow Manager to help healthcare providers like Epworth HealthCare find better ways of serving their patients and improving hospital efficiency. Patient Flow Manager is now in use at more than 100 hospitals across Australia, providing a targeted solution to a range of real problems hospital staff face every day,” he said.