The purpose of the RCH’s Good to Go (G2G) program is to ensure efficient use of beds and improve patient access within existing resources.
This is measured by the average multiday length of stay with a goal to reduce this by 10 percent, thus creating opportunities for more patients to have access to inpatient beds.
“Good to Go was conceived to ensure the patients can go home when they are clinically ready to go home,” Deputy CEO John Stanway said.
G2G focuses on continually improving bed management and discharge processes, through standardising practices and identifying more efficient ways of caring for patients, to improve bed availability.
“Everyone has to operate at their optimal level and operate together, otherwise the hospital won’t perform as well as it should,” John explained. “Our clinicians can only be as good as the support they get, they won’t be able to achieve excellence if patient rooms aren’t cleaned in time, or finance holds up approval for medical supplies.”
G2G is made up of multiple initiatives to improve access, care and patient flow across the hospital; including electronic patient journey boards, long stay patient rounds and criteria led discharge.
Criteria-led discharge helps avoid unnecessary delays in patient discharge, as the patient doesn’t have to wait to see their consultant before they can go home.
“Criteria led discharge creates a shared understanding between carer groups, the patient and their family of the clinical criteria that need to be met for the patient to go home,” John said. “All groups then work together to send the patient home as soon as this criteria is met.”
Outcomes to date:
• Multiday length of stay (LOS) target of 4.4 days has been achieved and exceeded
• The hospital is consistently discharging 20-25 patients prior to midday (compared with 6-8 patients prior to G2G implementation)
• Hospital Initiated Postponements have remained below target since Nov 2012
• Admission to wards from ED within four hours has increased from 22 percent to 55 percent in April 2014
• The number of long stay patients and their collective bed days had decreased dramatically.
Complex Care Pilot Program
The RCH has developed a complex care pilot program to support our most complex patients and their families.
“This program seeks to transition the model of care for complex patients from reactive management to optimising a more planned approach to maintenance of wellness and minimise hospitalisation as a result,” Deputy CEO John Stanway said.
The pilot program will offer advanced strategies to better support the care and treatment of children with complex healthcare needs and is built around three key components.
“The program will provide care at inpatient, outpatient and community levels and would ‘dovetail’ with existing services, both within RCH and across community service providers. This service will not take over from existing services but will enhance support given to the families and enable staff to integrate their care by establishing the appropriate systems and processes,” John added.