Scenario

The Agency for Clinical Innovation in collaboration with NSW Health have announced their new Improving Patient Healthcare Experience (IPHE) initiative for 2022/2023. Grants of up to $250,000 are available to local health districts and hospital networks to deliver new service improvement projects that will directly improve patient experience. Initiatives that will be supported will prioritise the use of digital technologies and alternative care models that align with NSW Health’s Value Based Healthcare strategy.

You are a JMO working at Northbridge Hospital in Sydney. You arrive to work early Monday morning to prepare for ward round and to get handover from the weekend staff. You print of 7 copies of the ward list for the surgical team, which is now 5 pages long with 24 general surgical patients and 7 new consults.

Next up is your pager. You turn it on to reveal a pending request from the weekend for an ‘urgent’ script to be faxed to a patient’s local pharmacy. Another page comes through from outpatients, this time requesting that you come downstairs to triage the new patients who will be coming into clinic this afternoon. There are 32 patients booked for a 4-hour clinic and with only two doctors rostered for the day. You scan through the outpatient list and recognise a few patient names who have been booked in for review. You wonder why they have been booked in, as most of them were recently discharged and required GP follow-up only.

After a very busy morning and lightning ward round, you stop for a break and catch-up on your emails. You see that the Medical Director of Northbridge Hospital has sent out an invitation for clinicians to apply for funding for a new ‘Improving Patient Healthcare Experience’ initiative led by NSW Health.

Usually, you would have deleted these emails instantly, but this one catches your attention. You’ve always been interested in technology and have been dismayed by how much of your time working as a doctor is taken up with admin and paperwork.

This initiative seems promising and having had training in quality improvement and value-based healthcare at medical school, you decide to give it a go. Your supervising consultant is supportive of you submitting an application but warns you that “these things often move at snail-speed so don’t get your hopes up. Oh and make sure you get the nurses onboard…nothing will happen unless they agree.”

When you get home, you open the link to the IPHE initiative and are requested to submit an online proposal.

Please choose one of the following innovations and answer the following questions:

Telehealth appointments in hospital outpatient general surgical, orthopaedic and fracture clinics
Nurse-practitioner led outpatient clinics
Use of digital communication devices for front-line clinical staff e.g. replacing pagers, fax machines
Remote patient monitoring medical devices
Virtual triage and clinical decision-making support tools
Other – students have the option of submitting their own healthcare innovation idea. You will require prior approval from Course Director, Dr Vikram Palit, via email prior to starting this assignment

Questions

What is the problem that your chosen innovation is trying to solve?

Provide a background to the problem with a brief literature review

Approx 250 words, references required (max 5)

What is your chosen innovation and how does it work?
1. Provide a background to the solution with a brief literature review

Approx 250 words, references required (max 5)

How does your innovation align with NSW Health’s Value based healthcare strategy. Consider the following:
1. How does it improve the experience and/or healthcare outcomes for patients?
2. How does it improve experiences of those providing care?
3. How does it improve effectiveness and efficiency of care?

Approx 400 words, references required (max 5)

How do you propose to design and implement this innovation at your workplace? Consider the following:

Who are the key stakeholders that you need to engage?
What outcomes are you going to measure?
How will you pilot this innovation? And over how long?
What improvement methodology will you adopt?

Approx 400 words, references optional

What does success look like? Consider the following:
1. What factors will influence the success of the project?
  1. Describe the enablers to success
  2. Describe the barriers to success

Approx 250 words, references optional

How will your innovation become sustainable? Consider the following:
1. How will you evaluate your innovation?
2. How will this innovation become ‘business as usual’ at your workplace?

Approx 250 words, references optional