CASE STUDY:

Organisation: Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH)

The Royal Hobart Hospital provides acute, sub-acute, aged care, inpatient and ambulatory services to a population of approximately 240,000 people in the Southern Region of Tasmania.

Challenge

A new patient administration system (PAS) was being rolled out across public hospitals in Tasmania. RHH needed to coordinate internal project staff, a state wide technical implementation team and system vendors to replace their existing 20-year-old PAS. Critical hospital functions including inpatient waitlists, theatre admission lists, patient admissions, outpatient clinic appointments and patient billing are managed in the hospital's PAS. Ensuring a smooth transition to the new system to avoid disturbance to patient care was a critical factor for implementation.

Solution

RHH engaged Synateq to manage their 7-month implementation project. Demonstrating skill in the management and coordination of the separate teams, Synateq were able to empower hospital project team members, rallying them through understanding of processes and controls and ensure stakeholder engagement and agreement for project milestones. Synateq's transparent, evidence- based project management approach kept all the stakeholders informed and in agreement and resulted in the seamless implementation of a very large and complex system.

RHH installs a new patient administration system

When it came time to implement a new patient administration system into busy Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH), the Executive Management Team was feeling justifiably cautious. Hospitals run on complex systems that cover clinical, administrative and logistical facets of their day to day operations. Their patient administration systems effectively control inpatient and outpatient hospital journeys, from recording their personal details, waitlist prioritisation, outpatient scheduling, ward and bed placement, through to managing the financial transactions of their visit. A hospital's patient administration system, or PAS, needs to run like clockwork and implementation of a new PAS, rolling over data and ensuring a seamless transition for hospital staff and patients, can be difficult in a busy hospital environment.

"The PAS implementation project at the Royal Hobart Hospital was one of the most extensive and highimpact I have been involved with. As Chair of the Steering Committee, I needed to be familiar with the current state, progress and risks of the project at all times, but more importantly comfortable and confident that reports and management of the project were reliable." commented Dr Tony Lawler, Deputy Chief Medical Officer at RHH.

Coordinating the hospital PAS project team with a state-wide technical implementation team and five vendors was a challenge that required experience for successful navigation. Synateq implemented strategies to empower the hospital team, through understanding of processes and controls and adopted a fact-based project management style.

Stakeholder engagement was a critical factor in success and RHH business unit managers were required to sign off on system configuration and implementation decisions as project milestones were achieved. The Executive Management Team was kept informed with evidence-based reporting against project targets which helped them to evaluate decisions and face implementation challenges with confidence.

Key dependent activities were also scheduled to occur in parallel with the introduction of the new PAS. These included the introduction of a new bed management system and renaming of specific wards and beds.

When the cutover weekend came, the new PAS ticked into place without missing a beat.

Tom Simpson, Director of Strategy, Planning, and Performance at RHH said "Synateq brought professionalism and rigour to our project.

We had all the right staff on hand from our hospital team to get the job done - what we needed was someone who could enable our team to deliver this project. James from Synateq unlocked that potential and ran a truly professional - and very successful - project."

Tony Lawler elaborates "James' skills in human resource management, conflict resolution and consensus building were evident, as was his ability to present information of a highly technical nature in an accessible fashion to those of us with a more clinical focus.

Credit for the success of the implementation of the PAS at the Royal Hobart Hospital, coupled with effective integration with the statewide project, sits in large part with James and his performance as project manager."

RHH not only have a new and improved PAS, but they now have a system that will carry them into the future and become the cornerstone of eHealth initiatives.

Source:http://www.synateq.com/

QUESTION:

• Identify and write down the new system and classify future improvements and staff training requirements
• Identify and write down the staff training necessities and training requirements for the new staff on administrative system
• Identify and write down the processes, strategies and appropriate activities for the implementation strategies in consultation with staff
• Identify and write down the further modifications required
• Identify and write down the process of notifying users

complete the questions in the report:

Report template

Introduction:

Requirements or modifications to administrative system:

Appropriate activities (developed) to support system implementation:

Staff training, development and management in terms of using the administrative system: