Epworth Eastern Hospital, located in Melbourne, is part of the Epworth HealthCare group. Epworth HealthCare is the largest not for profit private health care group in Australia’s state of Victoria, representing over 20% of hospital beds in the state. A leading innovator in Australia’s health system, Epworth embraces the latest in evidence-based medicine to pioneer leading-edge treatments and services for patients. It has seven divisions over nine campuses across the Melbourne metropolitan area and is renowned for excellence in diagnosis, treatment, care and rehabilitation. The Epworth Eastern facility has 223 beds, including 18 beds in a level 3 critical care unit and 24 beds in a cardiac unit. Its principle focus is on cardiac, vascular, orthopaedics, oncology, urology, endoscopy and surgical services. Epworth Eastern maintains state of the art equipment and technology, including a robotic operating system, digital surgical suites and a computerised medication administration system, while operating in a fully wireless environment.

As a private hospital focused on growing its market share, Epworth Eastern recognised the importance of engaging patients at the point of care. Epworth Eastern selected Oneview’s solution for its intuitiveness and innovation. To enable patient-centred care, Eastern integrated Oneview with its clinical systems to optimise workflows and the user experience.

Automating Patient Centred Care

Epworth Eastern embarked on a facility-wide change management initiative led by key executive stakeholders and clinical staff. The initiative, known as “Point of Care” (POC) is focused on supporting clinicians to deliver Patient Centered Care using the Oneview solution as the enabler. With Oneview clinicians can provide care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensure that the patient values guide all clinical decisions.

Case Study

The POC initiative at Epworth Eastern is supported by a clinically-driven governance committee comprised of executive sponsorship, business and technical resources collaborating to ensure key practices are implemented and fully adopted over time. The committee employs a clinical connector strategy across the organisation that places a strong emphasis on optimising workflows at the point of care to increase patient interaction time for all clinicians. To uphold the tenets of Patient Centred Care, the POC initiative aims to facilitate the following key elements in increasing patient satisfaction:

• Respect for expressed patient values, preferences and needs
• Coordination and integration of care
• Comfort, timely information, clear communication and relevant education
• Empathy, emotional support, relief of fear and anxiety
• Involvement of family and friends

The program sponsor provides executive guidance, supports the prioritisation of goals and champions the clinical workgroups. These workgroups identify “Day in the Life” requirements – satisfying these elements is crucial to ensure Oneview’s adoption and successful outcomes achievement.

Achieving Outcomes

To enhance patient engagement, the POC team implemented several critical features using the Oneview solution at the bedside. These included:

Nurse Rounding on each patient every hour – Resulting in:

• 6% Decrease in Pressure Ulcers
• 4% Decrease in Patient Falls

Patients and families using the Oneview solution to prepare for discharge with video education, goal completion and real-time collaboration with their care teams – Resulting in:

• 6% Decrease in Length of Stay

At Epworth Eastern, patients are collaborators in their care, upholding the patient centred care approach. They are empowered and involved in their experience. This increased patient engagement resulted in improved patient satisfaction scores, which increased to the 99th percentile.*

*Quality Indicator Measured by National Indicators of Safety and Quality – Australia

“It has been an absolute pleasure working with the whole team at Oneview Healthcare. Their professional can-do approach has made it very easy to develop a solution that will meet the needs of patients, medical specialists and staff at Epworth Eastern. Their capability and experience in terms of system and hardware integration with many healthcare solutions will allow us to transform our current and future workflows.”