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Planning at Waikato Hospital wins award
A Waikato Hospital project looking at delivery and capacity planning within the hospital, has been deemed so effective, it has won an award at tonight's Waikato District Health Board Best of Health Awards.
By far the biggest category, there were 14 entries in the process improvement category claimed by Waikato Hospital, which looks at recognising how planned improvement activities - both clinical and non-clinical - led to significant improvements in patient care or process improvement.
Process improvement activities aim to improve customer and staff satisfaction; and at reducing or eliminating process waste such as resources and time.
A brief description of the project
Waikato Hospital historically provided a set number of beds over the year with closures allocated primarily to known low elective periods, such as Christmas.
The associated nursing staff rosters were driven by budgeted matrix, which did not necessarily align with planned or acute demand.
There was minimal knowledge of seasonal demand, which regularly resulted in high elective surgical cancellations, large numbers of patients nursed outside of their specialty areas, high nursing costs associated with misaligned rosters with workload, and scheduled theatre sessions poorly utilised.
As a result of this project, there has been a focus on improved planning to place patients in the right place, in the right beds, at the right time. There has been an increase in surgical throughput and a decrease in cancelled surgeries.
This has therefore improved patient access to elective services and patients are spending less time waiting in ED for a ward bed.
Judges comments
"This project is using an off the shelf programme to the max; when it was obtained it was used DHB wide and implemented thoroughly. From the patient's perspective, this has had a monstrous impact.
"It is amazing in a hospital the size of Waikato, to embed something this large so quickly and get staff confidence in its use."
Other projects that received honourable mentions at the awards were:
Community pharmacy anticoagulation management service from Pharmacy 547
The Waihi Project (family violence) from Population Health, Waikato DHB
Waikato virtual lesion clinic from Waikato DHB's Dermatology Department; and
Working together to reach the health target of 90% of two-year-olds being fully immunised by June 2011 from Toiora Primary Health Organisation
For more information about the Best of Health Awards, other entries and the awards evening, visit www.waikatodhb.health.nz/bestofhealth
