Tweed Children’s Hospital in the Home/Paediatric Post-Acute Care Service provides a valuable role in enabling best practice care as close to home as possible. However, patients are currently receiving limited and inconsistent access.
From 2020-2021, only five patients were admitted to the Hospital in the Home (HITH) service. The limited access to the service is affecting patients, staff and the organisation in the following ways:
- Patients are burdened with travel and long hospital stays away from family and loved ones.
- Staff are frustrated about service barriers created by a lack of service clarity and inconsistent processes.
- The organisation is not achieving service level agreements for HITH and virtual care due to the limited-service activity.
The aim of this project is to develop a model of care that supports staff to deliver a well-defined, consistent and reliable services to improve access and bring care as close to home as possible for patients and their families. The project also aims to align the hospital with statewide directions for providing more sustainable solutions for access to healthcare closer to home (NSW Health 2023).
The introduction of this project will enable the development of a contemporary model of care in line with the opening of the new Tweed Valley Hospital in early 2024. The new model of care will also aim to meet the anticipated growing demand on hospital beds and needs of the local paediatric population.
To address the root causes, a range of solutions workshops were conducted with key paediatric stakeholders, using Blitz, brainstorming and ‘What Would X do?’ strategies. Site visits, consumer engagement and prioritisation strategies were also used to develop the following two project solutions:
- the development of a model of care in collaboration with key stakeholders
- the development of a simplified and improved referral pathway.
The implementation of the solutions has been guided by the Implementation Schedule and Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) Strategy to assist the service move from the present to the desired state. Implementation commenced in February 2023 and will continue until the end of the year as the service transitions to the new way of working and the model is transferred across to the new hospital in early 2024.
View this project's poster from the Centre for Healthcare Redesign graduation August 2023.
