Partnering with the South Australian Virtual Care Service to improve urgent care capacity and efficacy

We often talk about health­care ​‘path­ways’. What if instead of path­ways we built freeways?

A ​“path­way” con­jures up images of a side­walk or a trail wind­ing indi­rect­ly with­out a clear end­point. Free­ways instead, are designed for a pur­pose, con­struct­ed to meet spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria and rein­forced with safe­ty mea­sures and mon­i­tor­ing based on evidence.

A free­way that is designed through expert con­sul­ta­tion, con­struct­ed to the agreed cri­te­ria and sur­round­ed by safe­ty guards and mon­i­tor­ing to sus­tain and improve its deliv­ery is the goal across our health care system.

The tran­si­tion through health care often feels like a track up the side of a moun­tain for con­sumers and care providers alike. This is why the CEIH and Urgent Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work (SCN) have been lead­ing a con­ver­sa­tion across South Aus­tralia to help our health com­mu­ni­ty bet­ter under­stand which path­ways need an uplift to improve their capac­i­ty and efficacy.

After work­ing along­side the team at the South Aus­tralian Vir­tu­al Care Ser­vice (SAVCS), through design and plan­ning, we are excit­ed to announce that CEIH are offi­cial­ly part­ner­ing to:

• Facil­i­tate work­flow re-design to enable safe, sus­tain­able ​“free­way” mod­els — cre­at­ed for peo­ple need­ing admis­sion direct­ly to hos­pi­tal and senior spe­cial­ist sup­port for SAAS crews on-scene and clin­i­cians out­side of the major city hospitals.
• Build a com­mu­ni­ty of clin­i­cal and con­sumer lead­er­ship to sup­port the SAVCS, through the Urgent Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Network.
• Pro­vide addi­tion­al insights and analy­sis on sys­tem impact of new inter­ven­tions to enable it to grow as a learn­ing health sys­tem. This will include insights need­ed to dri­ve strat­e­gy, assess impact, and sup­port aug­ment­ed clin­i­cal deci­sion support.
• Devel­op algo­rithms where the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­dict and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions for actions is identified.

The CEIH Urgent Care team and the oper­a­tional clin­i­cal leads in the SAVCS will part­ner through the already estab­lished Liv­ing Lab. Togeth­er CEIH and SAVCS are excit­ed to deeply under­stand the con­text, iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties, redesign the work­flows, and sup­port care providers to embed these in prac­tice and in the learn­ing model.

Have an idea or a prob­lem you’re try­ing to solve to bet­ter health­care for South Aus­tralians? We’d like to hear from you — con­tact us.

Want to read more about the SA Vir­tu­al Care Ser­vice, vis­it their web­site or face­book page.

Image Cred­it: SA Vir­tu­al Care Service