Improving care for chronic disease sufferers
Hunter New England Health has been awarded funding to implement an innovative Chronic Disease Management System to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of care provided to patients with chronic disease in regional and remote areas.
The Commonwealth Government has committed $5 million in funding to the project under the Digital Regions Initiative over the next three years, in partnership with $3 million in funding from NSW Health and $4 million from HNE Health.
Director of Clinical IT Support and Development Dr David Doolan said the Chronic Disease Management System will address a need to better integrate our systems to treat patients with chronic disease in regional or remote areas of the Health Service.
“HNE Health has previously implemented systems that link acute hospitals with community services and general practices to provide equitable access to health services for disadvantaged groups, including Aboriginal communities and people in regional and rural areas,” Dr Doolan said.
“These steps have greatly improved health services to these communities; however there remains a need to further integrate these systems, particularly for our patients with chronic disease who receive ongoing care across many different settings.”
The project will address this need by standardising the care of patients with chronic diseases in regional and remote areas.
“The system will provide service providers across the area with standardised care summaries, decision support tools and reminders about preventative care to allow them to ensure patients from all communities and disease groups receive coordinated and well managed treatment,” Dr Doolan said.
“The system will be complemented by a range of infrastructure designed to improve the health outcomes of our patients with chronic disease.
“We will be increasing the coverage of facility and home based telehealth services. This will involve introducing video conferencing facilities at all HNE Health sites currently not equipped with these capabilities. We will also install these facilities in the homes of some of our patients with chronic disease who are unable to access our health services,” Dr Doolan said.
“This will allow specialist clinical staff to provide telehealth consultation to patients in regional and remote areas including consultation, education and support services in the comfort and privacy of their own home.
“The project will also involve increasing the network capacity of isolated sites with Hunter New England Health to allow them to participate in the use of the telehealth network and allow the sites to efficiently access the clinical information of their patients.”
The final improvement will involve upgrading infrastructure to increase the efficiency of reporting imaging results to clinicians.
“Improving broadband infrastructure will allow us to get patients’ imaging results back to general practitioners faster, ensuring treatment commences as soon as possible,” Dr Doolan said.
“We are looking forward to getting the project underway and working to improve access to health services for our regional and remote communities, particularly those with chronic disease.
“This is an exciting development for Hunter New England Health and our communities and will allow us to build upon our existing services and provide a more integrated and effective approach to treating patients with chronic disease.”
Contact: Sharna Mccarthy
Phone: 4921 4501