new south wales health

7/30/2019 New South Wales Health

1/4

Accenture Helps New South Wales Health TransformHealth Care Delivery and Achieve High Performance

Located in the southeastern Australia state of New South Wales (NSW), NSW Health is one ofthe world's largest health service organizations. Serving a community of 6.6 million people,NSW Health has approximately 100,000 employees and a budget of more than AUD$10billion (or approximately US$7.5 billion). Through a network of eight Area Health Services,NSW Health is committed to improving the health of the people of New South Wales,providing high-quality patient care and equitable access to health services, and continuallyenhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of health care service delivery.

Business challengeAccentures ongoing research into the characteristics of high-performance businesses in thehealth care sector reveals that many top performers adopt a patient-centered connectedhealth paradigm, which not only places the patient in the center of all health issues, butcreates an environment that promotes sharing insights and information to improve outcomes.

New South Wales Health


2/4

2005 Accenture All rights reserved. 2

This commitment to patient-centric health care and information sharing requiresmastery of several core capabilities, including the ability to integrate and effectivelyuse clinical data.

In its efforts to achieve high performance, NSW Health recognized the need tocapture, track, monitor and use cl inical information to promote better patient care andhand-offs from one health care area to another. NSW faced a major problem in thateach of the organizations Area Health Services had implemented its own methods

and systems for managing clinical processes and patient information. This made itdifficult for NSW Health to gain an enterprise-wide view of its systems, reduce risk,increase integration and improve information sharing within and across each AreaHealth Service (and between the Area Health Services and third parties and,ultimately, patients). NSW Health knew that it was just a matter of time before thesedisparate clinical information models would impact the organizations ability toprovide optimal health care services.

To build its patient-centric connected health capabilities, NSW Health decided tolaunch an Integrated Clinical Information Program (ICIP), which would satisfy anumber of important goals. It would enable common standards, systems andcapabilities across the Area Health Services. It would enable the acceleration of coreclinical system deployments across NSW. It would support clinicians in providinghigh-quality and safe care at all stages of the patient journey. And it would alsoprovide a strong foundation for the organizations move to a model of clinical

information management and patient care based on the use of electronic healthrecords.

For help in designing an enterprise architecture framework and implementation planthat would underpin the Integrated Clinical Information Program (ICIP)and,ultimately, the electronic health records programNSW Health turned to Accenture.There were several reasons for this choice. Accenture has deep industry skills,insights and proven practices that help health care organizations optimize healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. In addition, Accenture advocates an innovativepatient-centered connected health approach that focuses on reengineering systemsand processes based on patient needs and patient flows, rather than on

organizational structures or departments. This model helps connect far-flung healthcare enterprises and enables them to overcome a broad range of challenges toachieve high performance.

How Accenture helped

Accenture had already successfully applied its patient-centered connected healthapproach to help NSW Health tackle access block, defined as the percentage ofpatients admitted via emergency services that waited more than eight hours for anavailable inpatient bed. Within NSWs Hunter New England Area Health Service,Accenture worked with the organization to develop and implement a multi-yearprogram that aligned patient services, care and support processes, as well asenabling technologies, around specific patient journeys. Among the many benefitsresulting from this program, Hunter New England Area Health Service reducedaccess block from 47 percent to 22 percent, despite increased admissions. Thesolution also reduced patients average hospital stay by two to four days, reduced x-ray completion times from 60 minutes to just 14 minutes and improved pathologycompletion times by 30 percent.

Given these accomplishments, Accenture was asked to help implement an AccessBlock Improvement Program across 10 major hospitals in Sydney. Again, the resultswere dramatic. Access block in the majority of hospitals dropped significantly, insome cases by as much as 45 percent. Length of hospital stay also declined betweenone and seven days, depending on medical ward.


3/4


Buoyed by these successes, NSW Health asked Accenture to help roll out anIntegrated Clinical Information Program (ICIP) solution across the remainder of thestate. Accenture quickly teamed with NSW Health to conduct an Integrated ClinicalInformation Program architecture review, which helped the organization articulate itsbusiness objectives. The Accenture/NSW Health team began by identifying andconsolidating organizational priorities into four major strategic areaseach withspecific measures aligned to key performance indicators and each supporting a set of

clinical applications that would become core components of the to-be architecture.The four areas included:

Easier patient access to high-quality care

Accelerated and improved clinical decision making and information sharing acrosssettings

More effective patient flow management

Improved management accountability

Key findings from the current-state assessment revealed that the existing ICIPgovernance model and investments were not aligned with a long-term architecturedirection, clinical outcomes or a defined business strategy. Existing IT structures also

posed a problem. Integrated Clinical Information Program systems used differentcombinations of software hosted on different platforms, resulting in blockages in thepatient journey. In addition, the existing infrastructure was simply too complex,inflexible and costly to operate. Finally, the assessment evaluated NSW HealthsIntegrated Clinical Information Program implementation capabilities, determining thatthey were uneven, too costly and too slow.

Armed with these assessment results, Accenture helped NSW Health design a goalstate architecture that included:

A clear business strategy and flexible architecture that mapped ICIP programs,funding and performance measures to clinical priorities and patient-centered,connected health outcomes.

Governance processes that balanced front-line business needs and priorities withshared standards and a common architecture.

An implementation strategy that accommodated different deployment and supportmodels.

Further, Accenture recommended a pragmatic, phased deployment plan for theIntegrated Clinical Information Program architecture that would ultimately build acommon level of capability across the state.

High performance deliveredWith Accentures help, NSW Health now has an ICIP, enterprise architectureframework that clarifies the organizational vision for clinical information managementand defines the implementation strategy for this vision over the next five to sevenyears. Specifically, Accenture provided a clear understanding of the components

needed to realize NSW Healths Integrated Clinical Information Programpatientcentered connected health vision, a flexible clinical systems framework and aroadmap that will enable NSW Health to realize returns more quickly. Accenture alsoprovided recommendations through which NSW Health can best achieve its ICIPvision.


4/4


The recommendations included:

Establishing an area-wide patient repository to support shared access to medicalrecords among clinicians.

Implementing a distributed health service provider directory for better patient accessand support referrals between services.

Deploying a single, area-wide clinical information system to enable improved clinical

decision making.

Building a strong integration capability and common interface to manage clinicalinformation within and among area health services.

Managing patient flows and information availability within and across settings viasupply and demand tools and key performance indicator scorecards.

NSW Health is now implementing the proposed recommendations, which will allowthe organization and its stakeholders to realize a number of benefits. Patients willenjoy improved access to health care and better service. These benefits will bebased on improved information-sharing among caregivers, a focus on streamliningthe patient journey and tools that enable clinicians to make better and fastertreatment decisions. Clinicians will be able to better identify and care for patients,access relevant patient history more easily, save time and coordinate clinical

information sharing more effectively. And NSW Healths management will be able toimprove patient flow, improve planning and configuration of clinical services, supportfront-line accountability, and establish better forecasting and demand managementpractices.

By tapping Accentures insights, capabilities and best practices in these areas, NSWHealth is well on its ways to achieving its vision for integrated clinical informationmanagement. It is also laying the foundation for a move to an electronic health recordmodel of delivery, which will further improve efficiencies and quality of treatment in aconnected health care environment. In short, through its long-term collaboration withNSW Health, Accenture is helping the organization take a significant step on its

journey to high performance.

About Accentures Health Industry PracticeAccentures health service group provides innovative solutions to both the private andpublic sectors of the health care industry, including integrated health care providers,health insurers, managed care organizations and public health organizations. Thecompany has thousands of resources dedicated to helping organizations in the healthindustry achieve and sustain high performance.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcingcompany. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across allindustries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds mostsuccessful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With approximately 177,000 people

serving clients in more than 120 countries, the company generated net revenues ofUS$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page iswww.accenture.com.

new south wales health

Documents