stvincent’s@home delivers new models of care

26 Apr 2021

In late 2020 St Vincent’s embarked upon a new model of service delivery – stvincent’s@home, aimed at progressing our health service into the next phase of optimal health care provision, outside of our traditional hospital walls.

The project is moving at pace, with the expansion of Hospital in the Home (HITH), on track to deliver a 30 bed virtual ward by June 2021.

Much like our founding Sisters who were compelled to walk the streets, taking care to the people - stvincent’s@home will see more of our services being delivered in the community, delivering compassionate care to people where they most want it.
“stvincent’s@home will complement our traditional models of care,” explains Dr Christopher Robinson, Director of Innovation and Improvement.

“These new initiatives are designed to create more capacity to care for more people while at the same time, meeting increasing patient expectations of offering more accessible and flexible services. stvincent’s@home will enable our health service to deliver the best care, to more people in the most sustainable, efficient and safe way”.

“COVID taught us that the old ways are not always the best ways. stvincent’s@home won’t be for everyone, but for the right people, with the right models of care and governance we know patients will be safer receiving care in their own homes”, added Chris.

The stvincent’s@home project team have spent the past six months focused on establishing the projects and programs which will come to fruition over the next 12-18 months.

stvincent’s@home represents a new chapter for our health service that will not only future proof our organisation, but facilitate the expansion of St Vincent’s care to meet the growing needs of our community.

What are the programs that make up stvincent’s@home?

Virtual Outpatient Project

The Virtual Outpatient Project includes telehealth, where the clinician and patient connect in real time. Additionally, it includes remote patient monitoring where information, including symptoms, medication compliance, diet etc, is captured from the patient at their convenience, and reviewed by the treating clinical team.

Virtual Hospital Project

To complement the existing telehealth services, the Virtual Hospital Project will see the expansion our virtual care capabilities by adding a remote monitoring platform. This platform will capture information from patients by devices such as smart watches, temperature patches, oxygen saturation probes; as well as symptoms, medication compliance, and any other information as it relates to the patients’ care. The platform captures the information, making it available to treating clinicians to enable a more detailed and meaningful review of patients, early identification of deterioration, proactive medication modification and other treatment review.

These platforms will be complemented by an expanded Hospital in The Home (HITH) service) as well as support from traditional ambulatory services including chronic care, rehabilitation and community palliative care.

Expansion of Hospital in the Home (HITH)

The Hospital in the Home (HITH) service provides hospital level acute care to patients in their home environment, clinic setting or place of work. HITH is a hybrid admitting service, with oversight provided by the Admitting Specialty Team with an MDT approach, and daily consultations with the patient. As part of stvincent’s@home, HITH started with an initial bed base of ten, and aim to be at full capacity of 30 beds by June 2021.

stvincent’s@home operating model

The stvincent’s@home operating model aims to have one process for all patients and all services with a back-end digital system that allocates patients to the correct place at the correct time for the correct care. From a patient perspective, this will comprise of a ‘digital front door’ to our services, where patients are directly referred via a portal to the service they need without multiple forms and phone calls.

Transforming delivery of acute care

The Transforming Acute Care Service Delivery (TASD) project will support the evolution of our inpatient practices to enable both enhanced efficiency of care for inpatients and also optimise the flow of patients into our newly expanded services such as HITH. This project recognises that in order to change the way we do things outside the Hospital we need to support the enhancement of existing practices within the hospital.

Rehabilitation and Palliative Care

Rehabilitation and Palliative Care are two services extremely well suited to the concept of care beyond the hospital walls. Increasingly patients are expecting these services to be accessible to them in their own homes, where they can be with their loved ones and support people. While these are two of the first clinical services to have already focused their efforts to include home based care, this same lens will soon be applied to all clinical services with an organisational wide goal to grow Rehabilitation and Palliative Care in the home by 20-30% annually.

To find out more about these initiatives, contact Dr Christopher Robinson, Director of Innovation and Improvement at Christopher.robinson@svha.org.au