Dispatch from Digital Health Conference 2022
Sunday, 3 April 2022
NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
This is a brief summary of three presentations from the HiNZ Digital Health Conference 2022. If you are registered for the conference, you can watch presentations on-demand until May 31.
ePrescribing reduces errors at Counties Manukau Health The implementation of ePrescribing at Counties Manukau Health greatly reduced procedural prescribing errors in surgical and medical wards.
Dhairesh Patel, eMedicines management lead pharmacist at CMDHB, presented on the impact of ePrescribing on Adverse Drug Events and prescribing error rates, at the Digital Health Conference.
The DHB implemented MedChart for inpatient electronic prescribing starting in 2018 in the Spinal Unit and finishing phase four in long-stay mental health in 2021. More than 3000 beds are now live with the system.
Patel said an evaluation of the implementation showed a reduction in total prescribing errors per admission in both medical and surgical wards.
There was a reduction in procedural prescribing errors from 1,751 pre-implementation of MedChart to just eight, post-implementation: and in the surgical department from 1,006 down to 60 pre and post MedChart.
However, there was no significant reduction in clinical prescribing errors or reduction in Adverse Drug Events which caused harm. This was partly due to use of a hybrid workflows, such as both paper and electronic prescribing, and lack of interoperability between systems, he said.
Summary care record access for paramedics enables more care in the community St John has seen a significant increase in paramedics able to treat patients in the community since providing them with access to the South Island shared care record HealthOne
The ‘see and treat rate’ for keeping people in the community by urgent community care (UCC) paramedics was 15 percent in 2019 prior to getting access to HealthOne. These staff are now called extended care paramedics (ECP), who have more knowledge and skills and access to the shared care record, and the ‘see and treat rate’ has risen to 39 percent in 2022.
Orla Fowden, right care advisor at St John Ambulance, presented at the HiNZ Digital Health Conference and said patients had previously often been puzzled that ambulance staff did not have access to their health record.
Paramadics see around 1500 patients a week in the community and not having access to their health record adds complexity to making an assessment and decisions about whether to transfer them to hospital, she said.
St John worked with HealthOne to provide access to the record for front line ambulance staff. Extended care paramedics, who can provide a number of services to patients in their home, are the greatest users of the system.
Fowden said testimonies from ECPs said HealthOne access had reduced unnecessary transfers to hospital because they can see data such as normal baseline readings for a patient and access their blood records.
Taking lessons from Covid into Health NZ The importance of strengthening connections and communication between ‘grass roots’ and the centre; use of technology in different ways to enable care; and greater information sharing across the region and the country, are some of the lessons learned in the Northern Region in response to Covid-19 that could be adopted more widely.
Presenters from across the Northern Region talked about lessons learned from responding to the pandemic that could be taken into Health NZ.
Andrew Miller, Northland GP and clinical director information services at Northland DHB, talked about the use of telehealth to manage care. He said every incoming call to a practice for same-day urgent care is now fielded by a clinician, who can resolve around 50 percent of cases with a 3-5 minute telephone call with the patient.
The use of telehealth involves phone calls, video calls and patient portal messaging. “The tricky thing is how do we make this stuff stick?” he said.
Delwyn Armstrong said a dashboard showing near real-time capacity and occupancy of hospital beds across the four Northern Region DHBs “has so much applicability to other purposes”, such as looking at the neonatal units to see which one has capacity.
Lara Hopley, clinical director digital innovations at Waitematā DHB, said the e-collection system created for ordering Covid-19 laboratory tests is an innovation she would like to see used post-Covid. She said removing paper from the system reduces time spent both by the clinician collecting the sample, as well as in the lab to process it.
“The concept is really valuable and I hope we continue to build on that,” she said.
Daniel Calder, South Auckland GP and clinical director of Your Health Summary, said the primary care summary was stood up as part of the Covid response and should be kept and expanded on, post pandemic.
Presenters hoped that Health NZ would be an enabler of spreading innovation, agile working and greater use of technology to improve access to care.
If you are registered for Digital Health Conference 2022 you can watch presentations on-demand until May 31.
Picture: Orla Fowden presents at the HiNZ Digital Health Conference 2022
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