Waikato Hospital ED is trialling software Emergency Q to help ease winter pressure

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page

With Waikato Hospital’s emergency department on course to see 90,000 people this year (an increase of 20,000 people in just six years since 2011), its busiest days can see up to 300 people.

As its hardest period of winter sets in, Waikato ED is embarking on a six-month trial of New Zealand-developed software platform, Emergency Q to help ease some pressure.

Led from ED’s frontline, Waikato is joining Auckland EDs (North Shore Hospital and Middlemore Hospital) who have successfully run Emergency Q for the past two years.

The low-cost software is very safe, simple and easy to use and is open to anyone who may need urgent treatment at Waikato Hospital’s ED or another urgent care clinic or GP.

Emergency Q allows patients to decide where their healthcare journey begins with:

• access to the right care helping patients define ‘What is a medical emergency and what is not a medical emergency’ and learning about what types of treatment you seek emergency care for and what you should see a GP for
• seeing and comparing live wait and treatment times (Waikato Hospital ED vs our local trial partner Angelsea Clinic Urgent Care).

The software for our Waikato ED clinical team will help them by:

• freeing up staff to focus on emergency cases
• reducing non-emergency patient volumes
• providing better tracking of patients who do not require emergency care and can be redirected to Angelsea Clinic Urgent Care.

“Winter isn’t kind to our increasing patient numbers and it can be tough on our team,” says ED interim service manager Jenni Falconer.

“Illness and injury go up from trauma on the roads to more presenting with chronic and critical conditions; there are also more injuries from sprains and breaks from winter sports to people seeking treatment for colds and flus.

“In our pre-winter planning session, we had to try something different and looking at the success seen in Auckland with Emergency Q, we saw a low-cost opportunity to help our patients find faster and more appropriate healthcare options and free up some ED clinical resource to focus on patients with urgent care such as chest pain, stroke and trauma,” she says.

An added benefit of the software is its ability to reduce patient frustration and negative behaviour sometimes directed at front-line staff. 

According to a Middlemore triage nurse with 25 years’ experience, Lana Temara, “Since Emergency Q started it feels like the level of verbal abuse has dropped significantly. Even if people choose to stay they tend not to be angry about the wait as we have offered them an alternative and they can see the wait time on the screen”.

Source: Waikato DHB Newsroom, 6 August 2019

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.

Do you have an item to add to sector updates?

Email your information to us at updates@hinz.org.nz

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page