Major Queensland Hospital Trials Outpatient Waitlist Audit Digital Patient Pathway
Announcement posted by Personify Care 16 Aug 2023
When referral requests exceed outpatient clinic capacity, waiting lists are generated, with “long-waits” defined as patients waiting for outpatient appointments greater than the timeframe defined by their triage category.
By leveraging the Personify Care platform, the acceptability, accuracy, and feasibility of patients can be determined using an artificial intelligence and natural language process driven waiting list audit tool.
Personify Care’s platform was configured to contact long-wait patients based on a set of pre-defined criteria and ask a series of questions to determine ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to demographics.
To date, more than 95% of patients reported an "overall positive experience" using the solution.
“Although long-wait lists are audited to mitigate risks to patient outcomes, current audit processes are manual and time consuming. We’re pleased with how the evaluation phase has progressed - from positive staff feedback to more easily identifying patients that no longer need to be on the waitlist. We’re now looking ahead to how we could extend this program,” said the Nursing Director - Outpatient Strategies.
They confirmed the digital audit pathway has proven to save staff critical time.
“Previously auditing our waitlist could take in excess of 30 minutes per patient.
With the pathway doing our heavy lifting and a very high patient response rate, we’re pleased with the initial response to the project.”
The pathway was implemented to improve access to patients in need with real time visibility to the true state of the waitlist. The experience includes four key steps:
- A list of patients is uploaded into Personify Care
- Patients receive an invitation via secure link from Metro North
- Patients verify their identity through multi-factor authentication and provide consent to share information electronically
- Patients asked to respond to a series of questions to determine ongoing need for clinical care.
The trend towards waitlist audit pathways is mirrored across the globe as health services look to technology to complement their teams’ workflows and improve patient access to care post pandemic.
“This latest digital health initiative is an exciting example of how public health services are leveraging existing resources and digital pathways to optimise patient waitlists through their reform and recovery programs,” says Ken Saman, CEO Personify Care.
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