Published on the 02/11/2015 | Written by Donovan Jackson
The ubiquity of waiting rooms in hospitals is indicative of the malaise that plagues the healthcare industry…
With just five months until the first go live of a major project in the South Island, recently appointed Orion Health country manager David Hepburn said the efficiency problems facing the health industry are there to be seen by anyone. That’s because waiting rooms, which are a standard feature of hospitals everywhere, simply shouldn’t exist.
“With digital workflows and a focus on the patient, the efficiency which is possible means that room should be freed up for clinical purposes,” he said.
Orion’s South Island Patient Integration Care System (SIPICS) project intends to address just this issue through the creation of a single patient management platform across all five South Island district health boards. “We’re five months from the first ‘live’ at Burwood Hospital. It’s significant as we are creating a regional platform based on a regional workflow, with the five DHBs deploying a single instance [of administration software], which will deliver the ability to achieve regional planning and complete visibility [of the care process]. It will save money, integrate with clinical platforms and provide the basis to gain major efficiency benefits,” said Hepburn.
He added that the business case provides for ‘hundreds of millions of dollars per year’ in benefits to the taxpayer; at the same time, improved efficiency which should see the elimination of people waiting around to see a doctor, will also deliver a tangible benefit to individual patients, too.
The project is a big deal for Orion, agreed Hepburn, as it will serve as a reference model for the rest of New Zealand as well as Australia, the UK, Canada and beyond, where similar healthcare delivery models are in operation. “We’re already in conversations with providers abroad,” he said.
SIPICS is no small beer either; “We started three years ago and have 100 developers working on it. The actual delivery phase has been underway for around 9 months owing to a delay in readiness and a change in approach in how to deliver the solution,” he said.
With the go live, Hepburn said a massive step change can be expected for administrators. “They are typically using 20-odd year old technology. The user experience will be totally different, there will be a lot of automation, there will be patient flow advantages with, for example, some kiosks at a few sites. Far more streamlined resourcing and scheduling and a lot of data access improvements will be enabled. It is game changing for hospital administrators.”
The ultimate goal of improved healthcare efficiency will be measured by the ability remove the dead time of waiting. Uber did it for commuters and cars – can Orion do it for doctors and patients?
