Thank you to the clinicians, health managers, consumers and stakeholders who work with us to drive healthcare innovations across NSW.
Clinical network updates
Innovations forum sets the agenda for the future
On 6 February, the network hosted a Drug and Alcohol Innovations Forum attended virtually and in-person by more than 200 consumers, clinicians, health managers and peer support workers.
Attendees at the Drug and Alcohol Innovations Forum.
The event, themed around Ideas for the Future, featured two consumer keynote speakers and 13 presentations focused on novel ways of working, including:
- virtual care and rehabilitation
- new treatments
- improving client outcomes
- addressing workforce challenges
- working with consumers.
Attendees voted on their favourite innovations, which will be presented for consideration by the Drug and Alcohol Network Executive Committee as potential projects to pilot, scale and spread.
Join our executive committee
Are you interested in helping to shape the future of alcohol and other drug treatment and services in NSW? Apply to join our network Executive Committee. Nominations close Friday 1 March 2024. You’ll find more information in the expression of interest form or please contact the Network Manager, Regina Nagy.
The Menopause Taskforce continues to work with 15 local health districts (LHDs) and the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network to establish referral sites and hubs supporting people experiencing severe and/or complex symptoms associated with menopause.
Key initiatives
- The Implementation Working Group meets regularly to support LHD project leads through redesign capability building, and a community of practice for menopause services in NSW.
- MenoECHO, launched in September 2023, is a bi-monthly forum supporting general practitioners, gynaecologists, endocrinologists, other medical specialists, nurses and allied health professionals to build clinical capability in menopause management through case-based learning. Register for MenoECHO.
- In January, the South Western Sydney LHD menopause hub led a collaborative planning workshop in Orange with cluster referral site leads from Western NSW, Murrumbidgee and Nepean Blue Mountains LHDs.
Menopause Taskforce cluster workshop in Orange.
- Hubs and referral sites have received funding and are planning recruitment for clinical roles within nursing, allied health and medical teams (within the hubs). Contact your LHD menopause service coordinator for more information.
- A toolkit is being developed by a working group of LHD project leads to assist clinicians implement their referral sites and hubs across the state.
The network has reviewed and updated its Eye Emergency App and Manual with an expert working group, led by Dr Parth Shah.
The app is designed for medical, nursing and allied health staff in emergency departments and critical care, and for rural general practitioners. It provides a quick and simple guide to recognising important symptoms and managing common eye emergencies.
The app is available to download free from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. A printable PDF version is also available.
The network is currently crowdsourcing local initiatives designed to improve operating theatre efficiency. Professionals working in surgery, perioperative care, or roles relating to theatre efficiency and access, are invited to take part by sharing projects, pilots, research initiatives or novel clinical pathways related to theatre efficiency.
Sign in to the InnovateHub with your NSW Health login or register as a guest to share your insights on the InnovateHub.
The network has developed new resources for clinicians caring for adults with acute ureteric colic. Production of the resources was supported by the ACI Evidence team and an expert working group led by Associate Professor Andrew Brooks.
The resources include a clinical practice guide that provides guidance on diagnosis and treatment pathways, which aims to reduce clinical variation in NSW hospitals. An evidence report and patient fact sheet accompany the guide.
Statewide program updates
The Patient Reported Measures (PRMs) Program gives patients the opportunity to provide direct, timely feedback about their health-related experiences and outcomes. This feedback helps drive improvements in care and outcomes across the NSW health system.
PRMs are digitally enabled for collection and use at the point of care by the Health Outcomes and Patient Experience (HOPE) platform.
More than 95,000 PRMs have been collected from more than 600 services across all NSW local health districts (LHDs) and specialty health networks (SHNs). To better enable system-wide implementation, the HOPE platform was integrated with the Electronic Medical Record (eMR) system in all eligible LHDs and SHNs last year.
A new phase of HOPE enhancements
The next phase of the HOPE platform is expected to be released in early March 2024 and includes:
- four new clinical cohorts, including paediatrics, maternity, brain injury and menopause
- seven new PROMs (patient reported outcome measures) built for collection and use at the point of care
- functionality allowing Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network locations to be onboarded to the HOPE platform
- statewide manager access via the reporting portal
- more than 50 new platform and performance enhancements.
The ACI PRMs team is delivering training, education and resources to LHD and SHN PRM leads for local adoption and use. Your local PRM lead will provide information on how the new enhancements may benefit your workflows and what you can expect.
PRMs Symposium: 17 May 2024
You’re invited to attend the second PRMs Symposium, to be held virtually on Friday 17 May. This year’s theme is Patient Reported Measures: Enabling improved outcomes and experiences for people across the care continuum.
This event provides an opportunity for clinicians, consumers and other professionals to broaden their understanding of PRMs by hearing reflections on outcomes and learnings that enhance patient care. Register or find out more.
Congratulations Illawarra Shoalhaven and Northern NSW LHDs
Illawarra Shoalhaven and Northern NSW LHDs each reached a milestone of collecting more than 10,000 PROMs since the program commenced in 2021. Congratulations to the clinicians, administration officers, PRM leads and program sponsors who contributed to this milestone achievement.
PRMs in primary care
The potential integration of the HOPE platform with general practice software is currently being scoped. So far:
- primary health network CEOs have committed to a formal partnership to progress Phase 3 of the PRMs program for HOPE
- PRMs at the point of care via HOPE has been trialed successfully in a small number of general practices across the state
- meetings are being planned between the Commonwealth Government, NSW Health and NSW primary health networks in early 2024 to discuss the next steps of PRMs and HOPE
- work is progressing on building a patient-reported experience measure in the HOPE platform that would meet Royal Australian College of General Practitioners accreditation, including establishing focus groups.
Learn more about the Patient Reported Measures Program.
Use of myVirtualCare continues to grow and enhance care experiences
myVirtualCare (myVC) is a custom-built, web-based videoconferencing platform that helps patients, healthcare providers and carers to access and manage healthcare. First introduced in November 2019 and scaled up to support the NSW COVID-19 response, myVirtualCare was released for use across NSW in September 2020.
In 2023, myVC continued to grow, with 1,030 services using the platform for more than 465,000 virtual consultations throughout the year.
More than 17,000 consumers provided feedback on their experience using the platform between April 2022 and June 2023. Survey results were positive, including:
- 96% of consumers said virtual care was good or very good
- 89% of consumers said virtual care was better or the same as in-person care.
The full report is available to NSW Health staff on Virtual Care Central.
New palliative care consumer video resources
A series of videos and animations to inform palliative care consumers about the value of virtual care have been published. Read more about this in ourfeature story.