Advisory
Proving Hospital in the Home works, across five health services
6 bed-days
Saved per day, across five health services
Challenge
Five hospital and health services in North Queensland were expanding Hospital in the Home, acute care delivered in the patient’s home instead of a ward, and needed to show funders and clinicians that it was safe, effective and equitable, not only cheaper. Each service measured it differently, so the programme could not be evaluated as a whole. The equity question mattered particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients in remote communities.
Approach
I designed the benefits-realisation framework: a standard set of measures across effectiveness, equity, safety and patient satisfaction, defined the same way in every service, with data specifications each could produce. We then built the analytics tool that consolidated the five services’ data against those measures and reported bed-days saved, readmissions, patient mix and satisfaction, so the alliance could see the programme as one thing and each service could see itself against the others.
Outcome
The programme could show it was saving about six bed-days a day across the alliance, with readmission rates of one to three per cent, and that one in five patients were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, consistent with the access objective. Hospital in the Home episodes doubled over the period. The framework became the basis for continued investment.
Source
Engagement record.
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