New seamless service improves patient transport

Several teams across HSS have been working to deliver a system flow and reform program for the WA health system to help address the underlying causes of ambulance ramping.

The new Patient Transport Coordination Hub (PaTCH) provides a seamless service for patients requiring non-emergency transport between health care facilities.

First piloted at East Metropolitan Health Service (EMHS) late last year to coordinate transfers originating from EMHS hospitals, PaTCH has now been fully rolled out at EMHS health facilities and Perth Children’s Hospital. As of March 2024, it is being progressively rolled out at North Metropolitan Health Service facilities (Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Osborne Park Hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital and Graylands Hospital). South Metropolitan Health Service sites are scheduled to go live in May 2024.

The Hub allows dedicated PaTCH staff to easily book, schedule and allocate available non-emergency patient transport and has consolidated existing booking systems into a single process - improving efficiency for health professionals, staff and patients.

As part of WA’s State Health Operations Centre (SHOC), the PaTCH service is expected to coordinate around 77,000 patient trips a year, including 23,000 hospital-to-hospital transfers. There are plans to co-locate the service with the new WA Virtual Emergency Department (WAVED) later this year in a new, purpose-built location within the Perth CBD. Tony Spicer, Program Manager for PaTCH at the State Health Operations Centre, commended HSS ICT teams involved in delivering the technology platform for the Hub.
“HSS was instrumental in ensuring the implementation of the Patient Transport Coordination Hub and provided input and expert advice on a number of key deliverables pivotal to the successful roll out of the platform.”

The HSS ICT teams provided valuable input and advice on the hosting of the platform and linked PaTCH with the Realtime Demand Data Platform (RDDP).

Cathy Moore, RDDP Program Director, explains the RDDP team’s role in more detail.

“The Real-time Demand Data Platform (RDDP) program built data pipelines to integrate PaTCH real-time data into the WA Health Data platform, to provide visibility of patient transfer activity between hospitals coordinated by the SHOC PaTCH team.

“This data provides timely information for SHOC and clinical staff involved in low-acuity interhospital patient transfers, enabling them to coordinate these transfers more efficiently.”

Other HSS teams instrumental to the success of the PaTCH rollout were Infrastructure, Planning and Architecture, Quality Release Management for the testing and assurance of the PaTCH technology platform as well as the HSS Security and Risk Management team for providing security advice, including the facilitation of penetration testing.

HSS Field Support team and Service Operations also assisted with the deployment of technology infrastructure at EMHS along with support to PaTCH staff during pilot operations, staff onboarding, and the go live.

The Rapid Recruitment Team also provided support with fast-tracking staff recruitment and onboarding as well as NurseWest with placement of nursing staff within the new PaTCH roster pattern.

Delivering this life changing product to West Australians would not have been possible without the support of HSS executives, and the coordination between so many teams within HSS and across the WA health system.

Well done to all the HSS teams involved in delivering this innovative platform for the WA health system and walking the talk with our purpose and values here at HSS.