Consumer Information Session with Parliamentary Secretary for Health, 29 April 2010

The Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF) and Health Care Consumers' Association (HCCA) are co-hosting an information session to discuss the Federal Government’s proposed National Health and Hospitals Network with the Hon Mark Butler MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Health.

The consultation forum is planned for Thursday 29 April 2010 (09:00am to 10:30am) in Canberra. The venue is the Department of Health and Ageing Theatrette in Scarborough House, Woden.

We hope that many of our members will be able to attend this important event which will provide an avenue for consumer information and discussion on the hospitals reform debate.

Please register your interest to attend with Lindee Russell, CHF Project Officer by phoning (02) 6273 5444.

Please note that unfortunately funds to support attendance are not available. If you have any special needs please ensure you let us know.

Personal Health Records

One of the great potential benefits from consumers in the plan to roll out e-health programs is the improvement in the connection and integration of care. The development of personal held records which can be considered as a is of particular interest to comsumers.  This record would be owned and controlled by the individual consumer and the information it contains could be shared with designated clinicians, providing them with information that would assist them in treating our conditions. The National Health and Hosptial Reform Commission (NHHRC) developed this idea in their final report.

Recommendations 13, 115 and 120 of the NHHRC Final Report are about the need for every Australian to be able to have a personal electronic health record that will at all times be owned and controlled by that person. This is important to support people’s decision making and management of their own health. The Commission called for this by 2012.

Many consumers are already doing this in hard copy or on their computers. Many of the people we speak with you have Chronic Conditions understand that a personal held record is an important tool in managing their own health and making decisions. One of our members had a red A4 folder which he and his wife always travelled with. The folder has details of his diagnosis, medication, hospital visits, doctors and test results. Another consumer has told us about his simple, A4 double sided document that he keeps in this wallet. One of the participants in our recent training for consumer representatives. Julie Derrett spoke with Brian and he shared his story:

Brian has a heart condition and has had numerous visits to the emergency department for his condition. He carries with him a little red book which lists all of his medication history, strength, dosage, date started and reasons for any changes. He also has a letter from his cardiologist which explains his condition and his medical history.
When doctors at the ED ask him what medications he is on, he simply produces the red book. Doctors comment, “I wish all patients did this, it helps so much with diagnosis and misdiagnosis in the ED”
When travelling interstate in a rural area the letter from the cardiologist proved to be invaluable. ED staff in a regional centre were able to contact B’s cardiologist and get advice so that the right medications were administered quickly.
This simple paper based, personally held record has meant that Brian has received timely, well informed advice and treatment when he has attended the emergency department. He thinks that everyone who has a chronic condition should have something like this. If not a small book, then a fold out credit card sized summary document that could be carried in your wallet.

We are interested to collect stories from consumers about personal held health records. We would like to know the information you collect, when do you use it? when have you found it to be of most value? have you changed over time the information you have in the record?

A third hospital for Canberra?

Negotiations are underway between the ACT Government and the Little Company of Mary on the sale of the hospital infrastructure at the Bruce campus.

Today the Chief Minister spoke about the possibility of buidling a new hostpial if the negotations with LCM fall through.

But is a third hospital in the best  interests of consumers?  


We want access to safe, quality and appropriate services but are not convinced that a third hospital will provide that to our community.

We are concerned that building a third hospital and cost of maintaining three hospitals will have a negative impact on money available to community based services. There are not enough health dollars to service the current demand.  


The Government has a large program of works on infrastructure and redesigning health services underway based on moving many services to the community.  We support the move to community based health services.

We call upon the government to commit to a focus on primary health care. We are concerned that having three public hospitals in Canberra will not get us closer to achieving that.

We are supportive of the new nurse led walk in centre that is opening in May.  We are also very supportive of enhanced community health centres such as the new centres planned for Belconnen, Gungahlin and Tuggeranong.  We would hate to see funds diverted from community based services to pay for a third hospital.

Interested in improving the quality and delivery of health services in the ACT?

Are you interested in improving the quality and delivery of health services in the ACT?

Do you want to drive meaningful change for health consumers?

Why not attend our Consumer Representative Training?

HCCA provides this training workshop to people interested in health in the ACT at no cost to particpants. At the end of this workshop, you will have a better understanding of your rights as a health care consumer, how to effectively contribute your say as a consumer and what opportunities are available for you to make such valuable contribution to our health system.

Areas covered in the workshop include:
-Overview of the Health System
-Consumer Participation in the Health System
-Consumer Representation on Committees/Boards
-Understanding advocacy and the consumer perspective

18 and 25 March 10 - 2.30pm at HCCA offices in ACT Sports House, Hackett. 

For more information contact the HCCA office on 02 6230 7800 or see the training page on the HCCA wesbite

Exciting New Health Services Overseas

Megan Cahill, Executive Director Government Planning and Development, ACT Health spoke to HCCA members about the Ministerial Study Tour of United Kingdom and Scandinavia in August 2009.

Megan spoke about four sites they visited, gave an overview of the services and shared the key learnings from each of the sites. In this post we share three of the sites, the Telemedicine Clinic in Aberdeen Scotland, Hillingdon Hospital (London) Bevan Ward and the Great Ormond St Hospital (GOSH) in London.

Telemedicine Aberdeen, Scotland

Nurses in outlying Shetland and Orkney Islands would beam into ED of hospital nurse make preliminary diagnosis and then use telemedicine to present the person and seek advice about treatment on site or transport to the mainland for care. This system has been operating for 2 years, and they have had the opportunity to test and bed down any problems, refine and improve system.

The Orkney TIA tele-clinic won the Improvement and Innovation Award at the Scottish Health Awards in November 2008 and is a service with the potential for replication in other NHS board areas

Benefits include:

• technology enhanced timely access to care
•  useful for triage and management
• record all the tele-med consults and use this as a teaching tool nursing, allied health and medicine

This requires heavy bandwidth, which is an issue for infrastructure.

From the Annual Report of the Scottish Centre for Telehealth:

In July 2008, the new telemedicine service for patients in Orkney suffering a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) began. Current evidence suggests, and recent guidelines recommend, that patients should be seen by a specialist within 24 hours of a TIA so that secondary prevention treatment can start. Using videoconferencing, patients in Orkney can now see the on-call specialist in Aberdeen within that time because they do not have to travel to the mainland or wait for a visiting specialist.

By the end of March 2009, the Orkney TIA teleclinic had seen a total of 16 patients.

Following their telemedicine consultation, all 16 patients were able to begin the relevant treatment. Thirteen later travelled to Aberdeen for further investigations, treatment or management while three were able to remain in Orkney.

During the year, ENT tele-endoscopy became a routine part of healthcare services in Shetland. A dermatology service in Forth Valley which uses digital photography to triage patients is providing a model example of how telehealth can deliver service redesign.

Hillingdon Hospital (London) Bevan Ward

The Bevan Ward which has been operating since June 2009 and has 24 single rooms designed in three different layouts.

UK have moved to 100% single bed wards with positive implications for cleaning, heating, and implications for clinical outcomes for consumers.

This Ward is a good demonstration on how to achieve the single beds. The critical issues in terms of layout is the placement of ensuite. There are 3 configurations of single bed wards with inboard, outboard, nested layouts.

In developing this staff were given the opportunity to provide input into the design of the hospital and about placement of nurses stations and bed pan room and equipment and will evaluate at 6 months and 12 months.

The participants in the study tour were particular impressed with the touchdown stations staff could do observations on patients in an unobtrusive way. They were also impressed with the absolute commitment to infection control, bare from elbows down, wash hands before and after seeing patients, cleaning devices are placed to follow people's work flow. Each room has a clinical wash hand basin.

They achieved a significant reduction in infection rates.

There is a video online that provides a tour of the ward. It was taken by a consumer organisation that monitors NHS services in the Hillingdon area. It shows the room layout and ensuites, touch-down bases for nurses, infection control strategies, nurse call system, ward kitchen for patients and family, clean utility room and a an enthusiastic opera singer.

The video is available on the Community Voice website at http://www.communityvoicehealth.org.uk/ or for the direct link, follow this link Bevan Ward tour.

Great Ormond St Hospital (GOSH), London

This site is under going a number of phased redevelopments similar to the Canberra Hospital. The hospital is located in Bloomsbury in the middle of London (adjacent to the British Museum and Russell Square) and has considerable physical constraints. The project period will cover Phase 2 of a planned 4 phase re-development of the complex hospital site and Phase 2 needs to be completed by 2011. One of the project objectives is to provide an exemplar sustainable hospital design to influence the future UK hospital build programme estimated to cost $50bn.

The Morgan Stanley Clinical Building is due to open in 2012 at a cost of $520m.

This will include:

· new kidney, neurosciences and heart and lung centres.

· Seven floors of modern inpatient wards for children with acute conditions and chronic illnesses;

· state-of-the-art operating theatres enabling us to carry out more operations on children with complex conditions; and

· enhanced diagnostic and treatment facilities offering faster and more accurate services for patients

· Tele-medicine and tele-education facilities will be installed, enabling peer practitioners around the world to observe surgical interventions and other treatments via video linkup.

Once the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building has been completed they will redevelop and refurbish the Cardiac Wing, aiming for completion by 2014/15.

They are working to replace the inconvenient, cramped, outdated wards with new facilities where parents will have adequate space to sleep alongside their child in comfort, with parent break out spaces. They are also designing the hospital so that children can decide to leave their beds to eat their lunch in a separate room, visit the playroom or a computer.

They demolished an old building using a new implosion technique that meant that doctors conducting neurosurgery 10m away experienced no noticeable vibration.

The website has a video that shows the demolition processes in progress using large technology including track saws, excavators and pulverisers. The demolition focused on minimising disruption to patients, families and staff as well as minimising dust.

They have a focus on prefabricated components as they don't have space to bring in raw materials, assemble on site and then install, so, for example, ensuites were prefabricated and installed.

They have a webcam on the roof and part of patient entertainment system they could go to the webcam and get a panoramic view of London.

The participants in the study tour were particular impressed with the emphasis on the need for strong leadership in developing new models of care and change management process.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital were joint winners of the award for 'Best Environmental Strategy' in the Estates and Facilities Management Class of the Better Building Healthcare Awards last year. More details of how they achieve a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, use of bio fuels and increasing the use of renewable materials is available online.

A transcript of an interview with Dr Ken Yeang, (Director of Architects Llewelyn Davies Yeang) is also available on the GOSH website.

The are also excellent photo galleries online at the Build Health website.

We are hopeful that ACT Health will embrace similar websites to share the redevelopment process with the Canberra community.
Megan also spoke about the Akershus University Hosptial.  We are currently writing a blog post on this and will post next week.  In the mean time  I can recommend the blog post by Microsoft's health senior director Bill Crounse, MD, on how information technology can improve healthcare delivery and services around the world.  He vistied Noraway in June 08.