Page 3689 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
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MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Pettersson for the supplementary. Preparing health staff for the implementation of the digital health record was a mammoth task and a really important one. Considerable resources have been put in place to support our health workforce.
Change readiness became a huge focus of the implementation, as more than 14,000 ACT public health services staff were trained in the new system. This included training in the use of more than 8,000 new devices that have been deployed to the service for use at the bedside, in our labs and in the community. As part of the training for DHR, more than 160 courses had been developed and, by the time the DHR went live, over 2,000 classes were delivered and more than 8,000 people had received face-to-face training.
DHR training commenced at the end of August this year, with more than 1,600 superusers. Superusers were trained to provide at-the-elbow support to their colleagues. This wonderful group of people have been seen throughout our health services in their bright green vests providing that support.
Additional external support was also brought in, with experienced users from Parkville and Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne as well as more than 200 Epic staff from the US, to provide floor support for staff. These staff are also providing backend support to the DHR analysts troubleshooting any potential workflow issues.
Supports are backed up by a command structure that ensures staff have support as and when they need it. A command centre was established to act as primary hub for support and management of issues, with hospital command hubs established to work closely with the main command centre to help resolve issues in real time. Technical support teams have been increased and deployed out to the health services to ensure that issues with devices logins and the like were addressed immediately.
Each day, teams across the system are coming together to keep up that support as we embed our world-class digital health record into our public health services.
DR PATERSON: Minister, what have been the benefits of the digital health record since it has gone live, and what benefits can we expect to see into the future?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Dr Paterson for the supplementary. It is, of course, still early, but our staff and patients are already experiencing benefits from the digital health record. On the second day of being live, a patient shared on Twitter how impressed she was that the Aboriginal liaison officer was made aware of her daughter’s presentation to emergency and they were able to check on her and her family while they were still waiting. At the end of the last week, support services teams checked the ED for paper-based records that might need to be scanned into the system, finding there was no additional paper being produced.
Even more impressive are some of the initial patient safety statistics coming through. In the first week alone, warnings and alerts built into the system led to 190 medications updated after receiving a warning that the drug contained an active or inactive ingredient that the patient is allergic to; 349 medications removed after
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