Metro North HHS in Brisbane has used Personify Care’s platform to streamline the way they manage waitlists across five hospitals.
Metro North HHS in Brisbane says it has sped up its waitlist audit process by up to four times, thanks to a partnership with Personify Care, leading to an improved patient experience and time savings.
The team has automated the outpatient administrative waitlist audit process across 12 specialties at five sites, says the HHS’ announcement.
“This has involved the digitisation of two previous systems, a paper-based audit system and a health contact centre, into one seamless digital check-in.
“Through the digital waitlist pathway, Metro North has reduced administrative workload and streamlined the process of identifying those still in need of care, and those who no longer require an appointment.
“The use of technology has not only improved staff workloads but has enhanced patient access to care through higher response rates and overall improved management of long-wait patients.”
Staff at the HHS have noticed improvements across four measures of performance since the implementation of the Personify Care platform:
- Time savings: auditing waitlists manually took up to 30 minutes per patient. This process is drastically reduced by as much as four times, allowing staff to focus on other critical tasks;
- Improved patient experience: over 95% of patients reported a positive experience using the digital platform;
- Accurate identification of patient needs: the platform allows for real-time identification of patients who no longer need to remain on the waitlist, streamlining the process of identifying those still in need of clinical care; and
- Positive staff feedback: hospital staff appreciate the reduction in manual workload, with many praising the efficiency of the digital audit system.
The new platform has proven to be 53% cheaper than paper-based audit system and 67% cheaper than the health contact centre system.
“The digital pathway has improved access to patients in need with real time visibility to the true state of the waitlist,” said Metro North’s acting nurse director, Meredith Nelson.
“Previously, auditing our waitlist could take in excess of 30 minutes per patient and the whole audit process could take months.
“This has been dramatically reduced with the end to end process now taking less than two weeks.
“The pathway does the heavy lifting for us and has a very high patient response rate.”
Personify Care’s platform was configured to contact long-wait patients based on a set of pre-defined criteria and ask a series of questions to determine ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to demographics.
The audit process digitisation was initially co-designed and coordinated by the central Metro North team. It is now being decentralised, allowing specialty teams to manage their own audit pathways.
The experience includes four key steps:
- Uploading the waitlist: the hospital uploaded a list of long-wait patients into Personify Care’s platform;
- Patients were contacted via secure link from Metro North, inviting them to participate in the audit;
- Secure identification: patients verified their identity through multi-factor authentication and provided consent to share their information electronically; and
- Patients responded to a series of questions aimed at determining their ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to their health status or demographics.