St John of God Midland opens on time and budget with Emerging EMR
The $360 million St John of God Midland Public and Private Hospitals have opened on time, on budget and with the minimum of fuss in Perth’s east, taking the place of the aged Swan District Hospital and offering new services to the region such as day oncology and a high-dependency coronary care unit.
It will also serve as a testbed for the roll-out of Emerging Systems’ EHS clinical information system to other St John of God hospitals around the country and will link to both the national My Health Record (MyHR, formerly PCEHR) and WA Health’s internal systems, with secure messaging of discharge summaries to local GPs also high on the priority list.
The hospital campus is a public private partnership between St John of God Health Care and the state and federal governments, with the governments putting in $180m each for the 307-bed public hospital and St John of God funding the 60-bed private hospital. The two hospitals are integrated rather than just co-located, sharing all back office functions, operating theatres and ICU but with separate medical wards and private consultants’ suites.
In addition to general medical services, specialties, geriatrics, rehabilitation and acting as one of the three main stroke units for Perth, the new hospital will offer ambulatory care, maternity and neonatology, and has a large emergency department. New services that have not before been available to the area from a general hospital include a high-dependency coronary care unit and day oncology services to the region.
A St John of God spokesperson told the IQPC Australian Healthcare Week conference earlier this year that the hospital would open with a scanning solution and the clinical information system (CIS) from Emerging Systems, now owned by Telstra Health. While the organisation has a suite of preferred systems that it uses throughout its 15 other hospitals, before last year it had not had a preferred CIS or EMR.
Emerging Systems was chosen as the preferred vendor in 2014 and the plan is to test drive it at Midland before potentially rolling it out to the other hospitals, including the 555-bed St John of God Subiaco Hospital. The solution was first developed by St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Sydney and is used by a number of hospitals in the St Vincent’s Health group.
As part of the PPP, St John of God has to fulfil a number of interoperability requirements from the state government. It will be required to send a discharge summary or an episode of care summary to the MyHR as well as out to local GPs, and WA Health will have access to its pathology and radiology results.
It is also required to use the Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI), which will link back to WA Health’s master patient index, and to integrate the CIS with the webPAS patient administration system from CSC, which is being rolled out statewide.
Key functionality in the new system includes patient lists, orders and results, referrals, allied health, patient activity data, alerts and allergies, clinical messages, patient assessments and care plans, discharge summaries, ED summaries, outpatient letters and nursing discharge letters.
Emerging’s EHS is a mobile-ready system, and will be accessed at St John of God Midland on workstations on wheels, iPads and other tablets. Role-based messaging between nursing, allied health and medical staff task lists will also be implemented.
Emerging Systems managing director Russel Duncan said the system was unique in that it has been built in Australia for Australian hospitals.
“Our product reflects existing work practices and is easy for staff to use, including tablet device compatibility,” Mr Duncan said in a statement.
He said that the solution was a fully integrated electronic medical record, meeting all the needs of both the public and private hospital environment.
“We know the importance of integration and interoperability in the success of eHealth solutions. Patients’ clinical data at the St John of God Midland Public and Private Hospitals will integrate seamlessly with the hospital’s patient administration system, the national My Health Record system and eventually the Western Australia Health Department, helping build a more connected health system and improve productivity and clinical care.”
St John of God Health Care group director of corporate services Kevin Taylor said the system was selected after a comprehensive selection process that rewarded the ability to have data highly available in an interoperable environment.
“We have a very clear expectation that the Emerging solution will lead to efficiency and accountability and will be a major system which will enable us to interconnect with the Western Australian government’s health services through expedient data sharing,” Mr Taylor said in a statement.
“The Emerging product delivers benefits for everyone involved in the hospital; patients, staff and administrators. We get a great system from Telstra Health that is built for Australian conditions, makes it easier for staff to do their job, delivers enhanced clinical care and patient outcomes, and does it in a way that is affordable and sustainable.
“By choosing an Australian EMR platform we can deliver better continuity of care for patients. A unique factor is the way we can easily notify general practitioners when one of their patients is admitted, when they are discharged and deliver a secure discharge summary of what treatment and condition they have been seen for. The doctors we have spoken to are very pleased with this integration.”