Qld hospital trials digital patient pathway for outpatient audits

The Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital is using Personify Care’s digital patient pathways to conduct outpatient audits, giving users access to the true waiting time at the hospital.

When referral requests exceed outpatient clinic capacity, waiting lists are generated, with “long-waits” defined as patients waiting for outpatient appointments greater than the time frame defined by their triage category.

The platform is used to contact those patients using predefined criteria which assesses through a series of questions the ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to demographics.

The Nursing Director of Outpatient Strategies said, “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.”

Personify Care uses artificial intelligence and the natural language process-driven waiting list audit tool to save patient and staff time, claiming that 95% of patients reported an “overall positive experience” with the solution.

“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 solution requires a list of patients to be uploaded into Personify Care. Patients then receive an invitation via secure link from Metro North Health and will need to verify their identity through multifactor authentication and provide consent to share information electronically. Finally, they will be asked to respond to a series of questions to determine ongoing need for clinical care.

The pathway was implemented to improve access to patients in need with real-time visibility to the true state of the waitlist.