Clinical service redesign

Background

WA Health has embarked on a systematic and integrated program of reform and improvement in an effort to address the many challenges facing health care organisations such as an aging and growing population, increased demand on emergency care and hospital beds, escalating costs and projected workforce shortages. Many changes have already been delivered, but we still have a long way to go.

Improvement needs to occur at every level of health service delivery in order to achieve long term, sustained results. Changes that impact directly on the timeliness and quality of patient care are of immediate priority. As such, we have commenced a clinical service redesign initiative across WA Health aimed at reducing delays to the patient’s journey and improving access across key areas of the health service.

What is clinical service redesign?

Clinical service redesign is about designing a health system where patients move smoothly though a coordinated system to ensure they receive high quality care. A system where the time taken for patients to move across difference settings in the hospital and the community is minimised and where patients receive care within agreed timeframes and stay in hospital no longer than they clinically need to.

This involves looking at different ways to organise services around the needs and preferences of patients, rather then the needs and preferences of services. The end result will be to create, spread and sustain reform and redesign activity, to further develop leadership skills and create a culture of improvement. This will ultimately enhance the patient experience by improving the delivery, quality and flow of care. Patients and Carers Framework (PDF, 394KB).

What we are doing?

WA Health is coordinating a number of initiatives across health services to deliver a system wide approach to clinical service redesign (PDF, 111KB). This includes:

Redesigning and improving care according to the patient’s needs, where every step in the patient journey will be examined and improved.
Using methods such as LEAN Thinking, constraint theory and 6 Sigma to foster and accelerate the momentum for continued constant quality improvement (refer to the Service Improvement Resource List below).
Creating a culture that supports sharing of ideas and innovation across the teams and across WA Health.
Disseminating across WA Health the tools, strategies, redesign methods, lessons, data measures and others experiences.

How are we going to do this?

A Clinical Services Redesign unit (CSR) has been established by the Area Health Services and the Health Reform Implementation Taskforce. The CSR will help build capacity within the project teams to ensure sustainability by:

Providing education and training;
Facilitating and supporting site-specific project teams across WA Health;
Ensuring activity meets with the operational plans and the strategic intent of WA Health;
Spreading the results, methods, tools, and lessons across WA Health; and
Ensuring consistency of measurement and data.

The key contact for the CSR is Yvonne Zardins.

Project teams have already been established at Sir Charles Gairdner and Royal Perth Hospitals.

SCGH – Emergency Department Flow
Clinical Lead: Dr Debra O’Brien
Key Contact: Kerrianne Blondel
RPH – Elective Surgery Flow
Clinical Lead: Dr Sudhakar Rao
Key Contact: Kim Hill

Clinical service redesign

Background

What is clinical service redesign?

What we are doing?

How are we going to do this?

Further reading and resources

Presentations

Links