Authors (including presenting author) :
Mak Calvin(1)(4), Cheung Y M(2), Yip Dennis(3), Cheng Wallace(4), Lee Herman(4), Ng Tommy(4), Chan Jacky(4), Lau Alex(4), Tsang Kevin(4)
Affiliation :
(1)Department of Neurosurgery, (2)Ambulatory Care Center, (3)Department of Administration Services, (4)Information Technology Department, Kowloon Central Cluster
Introduction :
Delivering the transportation service for out-patients/day patients between hospital and patients’ home is managed by Non-Emergency Ambulance Transfer Service (NEATS) together with Ambulatory Care Centre (ACC). Transportation arrangement would depend on which point it is now on along individual patient journey, e.g. patient waiting for X-ray examination, consultation, medication, blood-taking and etc. The current practice to identify patient status is conducted by numerous and repeated phone calls between clerical staff in ACC and NEATS. It is difficult to obtain the patient status in his/her journey just-in-time especially during periods of busy hours. Actually, many similar scenarios but different use cases of tracking patient journey are required in hospital, e.g. informing patient relatives for patient’s stage in OT, tracking the real time status of stroke patients for A&E department and stroke team and etc.
Objectives :
1. To enhance efficiency of patient journey tracking
2. To provide real-time & transparent information on patient journey to facilitate operation of various stakeholders
3. To save manpower from the overall workflow
Methodology :
With the help of Smart Integrated Clinical Operations System (SICOS) dashboard, it enables the critical decision support and planning for hospital operations as it serves as a just-in-time information display platform for different patient activities and status. The first use case is to enhance the communication workflow for ACC and NEATS patient transportation arrangement. When the patient reaches the check point of designated healthcare service, e.g. like consultation, blood taking, etc, the staff would scan the appointment slip to register the patient to the system. The patient activities, arrival time, location are thus recorded, manipulated and then displayed at the dashboard for various stakeholders in customized way. With a clear illustration of patient journey, NEATS staff can then promptly arrange patient transportation in proactive manner.
As a generic platform, the system would be further extended to support other patient journey, e.g. in operation theatre to facilitate the communication workflow between patient relatives and OT nurses.
Result & Outcome :
The system is now managing the patient journey in QEH for ACC and NEATS department, involving around 4000 patient activities during the past 7 months. On average the system is handling more than 150 patients per month. It is saving around 3,000 minutes per month for clerical staff in SOPC and NEATS office staff from unnecessary phone calls. The system has streamlined the communication workflow with reduced manual efforts.
