Customer Stories / Healthcare
/AU_CALHN_logo%401x.b62ed65ff7096fec9f8af2757f4b87f15a3319ef.png "Company Logo")
CALHN Improves Patient Care and Alleviates Caregiver Burden through Digital Patient Pathways
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) leverages Personify Care’s digital pathway solution on AWS, easing staff administrative workload, enhancing patient access, shortening wait times, and providing patients with better information about their care episode.
90%
patient response rate across all specialties and age groups
28%
reduction in day of surgery cancellations
71%
shorter waitlist times for endoscopies
25%
shorter CT scan appointment durations for cancer services
14 minutes
for an average pre-anesthesia assessment
Overview
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) is South Australia’s largest health network. To keep pace with the growing demand for health services and enhance patient access, education, and recovery, it uses AWS Partner Personify Care's software as a service (SaaS) solution to digitize patient pathways across multiple specialties and hospitals in Australia.
Using Personify Care’s SaaS solution, CALHN is optimizing its patient experience and freeing up caregivers to deliver high-value care, identify risks earlier, and implement new models of care for better health outcomes. The AWS-based SaaS solution uses Amazon CloudFront to mitigate server load and Amazon S3 for object storage and provides digital patient pathways that convert paper– and phone call–based protocols into a patient-focused digital experience.
Opportunity | Responding to a Growing Demand for Health Services
Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) has an ambitious mission: to shape the future of health in South Australia through world-class care and research. As South Australia’s largest health network, CALHN serves almost 30 percent of the region’s population. The organization delivers public health services to two major Adelaide hospitals and a range of rehabilitation and mental health facilities.
With more than 984,000 patient encounters per year and a growing demand for health services, CALHN was struggling to keep pace with demand. Its staff documented patient encounters via paper forms and phone calls, which resulted in a high percentage of staff time spent collecting and processing patient information. Often, this led to delays and cancellations on the day of admission due to lack of visibility into patient progress and clinical risk. For example, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (TQEH) endoscopy team could only book appointments one week in advance due to the sheer volume of paperwork and calls needed to coordinate. In one TQEH cancer unit, staff spent approximately 20 minutes of each patient consultation collecting paper-based consent forms. These inefficiencies impacted the patient experience and created additional administrative burdens on healthcare providers.
At the same time, CALHN was seeking a digital health solution to remotely triage patients and reliably capture patient histories to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. The solution needed to be deployed quickly and support rapidly changing public health protocols.
Personify Care has helped us rapidly implement new patient pathways within four weeks, without needing to change existing clinical protocols. These pathways are already freeing up our teams to deliver high-value care, identify risks earlier, and implement new models of care for better health outcomes for South Australians in the future.
Paul Lambert
Executive Director for Digital Design
Solution | Digitizing Patient Pathways Across Multiple Hospitals with Personify Care on AWS
In 2020, CALHN engaged Personify Care, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner, to co-design, test, and launch digital pathways for its patients across multiple institutions such as TQEH, Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH), and SA Dental. The initiative was supported by Go2Gov—a program delivered by the Office of the South Australian Chief Entrepreneur and Department for Innovation and Skills to solve government challenges by connecting government agencies with innovative companies.
Personify Care’s AWS-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution takes advantage of AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront to mitigate server load by offloading static resources and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for object storage for all customer assets. The solution is built on AWS through Aptible, which provides an AWS-powered HIPAA-compliant platform as a service.
Using AWS, the Personify Care platform can seamlessly scale along with increasing demand. AWS also supports CALHN’s ISO/IEC 27001:2013, 27017:2015, and 27018:2019 certifications for compliance with security requirements.
The Personify Care solution supports health services in communicating important information and tasks to a patient between their face-to-face encounters with care providers and continues to monitor a patient’s recovery from surgery after hospital discharge. The digital patient pathways convert paper– and phone call–based protocols into a patient-focused digital experience. Patients receive a secure link from their health service to access their pathway on an electronic device, such as a computer, tablet, or phone.
Outcome | Optimizing the Patient Experience and Freeing Up Teams to Deliver High-Value Care
Using Personify Care's digital patient pathways solution, CALHN has enhanced the overall level of patient care across the healthcare institutions it serves, alleviating the burden on caregivers. For instance, TQEH has improved patient experiences by reducing appointment times. Some observations noted by caregivers include a 28 percent reduction in day of surgery cancellations, a 71 percent reduction in waitlist time for endoscopies, and 25 percent shorter appointment duration for cancer-related CT scans. The organization also reported a 90 percent response rate across all specialties and age groups. Additionally, patient assessments at pre-anaesthesia clinics now take about 14 minutes instead of 20–30 minutes. Sharon Gillespe, clinical nurse specialist at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, says, “This changes my daily workflow significantly. We’re able to process patients at a much faster rate, and yet still provide the same level of clinical oversight.”
Meanwhile, caregivers at RAH are also serving patients more efficiently thanks to reduced manual workloads and increased visibility into patient data. For example, automation has saved administrative staff from performing pre-admission follow-ups for over 85 percent of the hospital’s patients, and clinical staff can reduce delays in care that result from insufficient patient information.
Paul Lambert, executive director for digital design at Central Adelaide Local Health Network, explains, “Personify Care has helped us rapidly implement new patient pathways within four weeks, without needing to change existing clinical protocols. These pathways are already freeing up our teams to deliver high-value care, identify risks earlier, and implement new models of care for better health outcomes for South Australians in the future.”
More recently, CALHN implemented the Personify Care solution for its surgical “prehabilitation” program, known as My PreHab. The program invites referred patients to self-screen for manageable risk factors and guides them to take simple steps to optimize their health before surgery. Professor Jane Andrews, project lead, says, “My PreHab helps identify patients prepared for elective surgery and informs those not yet ready about the necessary steps. This alleviates waiting time pressure and eases post-admission pressure as well. Well-prepared patients typically experience fewer complications, leading to shorter hospital stays.”
Following its successful collaboration with Personify Care to digitize its patient pathways, CALHN is excited to continue working with the AWS Partner, who will be extending its AWS-based SaaS solution throughout the state of South Australia in the next two years.
About Central Adelaide Local Health Network
Australia-based Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) provides healthcare service to almost 30 percent of the region’s population. CALHN delivers public health services to two major Adelaide hospitals and a range of rehabilitation and mental health facilities.
AWS Services Used
Amazon Cloudfront
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service built for high performance, security, and developer convenience.
Amazon S3
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Get Started
Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today.