Improving Patient Care and Flow Management Using an Integrated Digital Platform – an Independent Benefit Analysis

Opportunity

Many patients have complicated inpatient care needs. The Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN) has engaged Alcidion to provide digital resources that give staff timely access to information needed to optimise the match between patients’ needs and available inpatient beds, hence minimise moving patients between wards after admission.

Alcidion will implement an integrated digital solution, an electronic patient journey board, to provide real-time time transparent oversight of the care status of all patients. The journey board integrates existing patient-related data sources, with the capacity for ward-level data customisation. The impact on patient-related outcomes will be evaluated using a time series approach to changes in commonly recognised key patient flow indicators. The project will use both quantitative and qualitative approaches to conduct systematic before-and-after analysis. The qualitative research will provide learnings for the future implementation of the electronic journey boards in other settings.

The evaluation of the impact of implementation will be NALHN-wide, covering both acute hospitals. The project will inform the healthcare systems stakeholders the benefits of using an integrated digital solution to facilitate the implementation of process improvement, which would contribute to better demand and capacity management as well as better patient care in the right place, at the right time, first time, and in time.

Project Objectives

This project aims to deliver on the following specific objectives:

• Identify benefits and enhancement opportunities with quantitative and qualitative before and after results.
• Demonstrate the enabling power of an advanced software platform in implementing process change.
• Share evidence on the benefits of implementing integrated digital resources for more effective decision support to the wider health services research community, communicating this through peer-reviewed publications.
• Contribute to the evidence base for digital health solutions.