The Fraser Coast’s St Stephen’s Hospital has been awarded one of the world’s most highly respected accolades, the HIMMS – Elsevier Digital Healthcare Award for ‘Outstanding ICT Achievement’. The award was presented at a ceremony held as part of the HIMSS Asia-Pacific conference in Singapore overnight.
To receive this award places St Stephen's Hospital among a select group of world class healthcare facilities to successfully deploy a high level of health IT to significantly improve quality of care and patient safety.
St Stephen's General Manager and Director of Nursing, Amanda Cruwys, said there had been a great deal of groundwork done by a number of clinicians and IT specialists over the past couple of years to enable the digital framework to be ready.
“The hard work and dedication of a small team of specialists has enabled our hospital to reap many benefits both financially and ultimately in patient care.
“We now have a ‘closed-loop’ medication management system, electronic food management system, as well as an integrated patient system incorporating television, internet, telephone, pre-discharge patient education material and menu selection," she said.
UnitingCare Health (UCH) Executive Director, Richard Royle, was in Singapore to accept the award. UCH is one of the largest not-for-profit private hospital groups in Queensland and administers St Stephen's as well as The Wesley Hospital and St Andrew's War Memorial Hospital in Brisbane and The Sunshine Coast Private Hospital.
“We have been able to demonstrate how team leadership, extensive planning, transformational change management and a unique collaboration with the vendor, Cerner Corporation, have enabled us to initiate these significant changes in our hospital,” Mr Royle said.
“This allowed us to open the $96 million hospital on-time and on-budget. The ground work within the digital framework that has been done at St Stephen’s will be rolled out in time to other UCH hospitals.”
St Stephen’s opened in Hervey Bay in October 2014 and was Australia’s first Healthcare Information Management System Society (HIMSS) Stage 6 certified facility and the country's first fully integrated digital hospital.