A Mackay Base Hospital service that provides hospital level care in the comfort of a patient’s home has taken out a local service excellence award.
The team received the Chief Executive’s Values Champion Award at the annual staff reward and recognition event Let’s Celebrate.
The Hospital In the Home (HITH) model of care supports the specialties of general medicine, general surgery and orthopaedics as well as paediatric patients.
Chief Executive Lisa Davies Jones said the team had demonstrated the health service’s values of collaboration, trust respect and teamwork as they set about re-invigorating the service.
“There really is no place like home. HITH allows people to go home to recover yet still receive medical and nursing care they need,” Ms Davies Jones said.
“They have had to collaborate with many areas in the hospital to offer this service. They have shown great leadership to offer a high quality and innovative alternative for patient care in their home,” she said.
Patients receive home visits by a registered nurse and allied health if required, as well as remote support through monitoring equipment.
Ms Davies Jones said the service could care for a wide range of conditions including cellulitis, urinary tract infections and paediatric diabetes as well as people recovering from surgical procedures.
“For example, if a patient is only staying on the ward to receive intravenous antibiotics once a day, this can still happen in their own home,” she said.
“HITH makes a huge difference to patients’ well-being and helps keep hospital beds for people who need more intensive treatment.
“Patients sleep better, eat what they enjoy and have the comfort of family and friends around them. There is also strong evidence that people recover more quickly at home because there is an obvious stress associated with actually being in hospital,” she said.
Under the new service patients receive remote monitoring devices to log their vital signs and other information via an app.
Phone and video support from nurses and doctors is available 24 hours a day. The hospital has recruited additional medical, nursing and allied health staff to support the service.
Some patients are directly admitted from the Emergency Department or Short Stay Unit, directly from nursing homes while others are inpatients who transition to HITH to continue their treatment at home.
“The creation of a Virtual Ward to support COVID-19 patients in 2020 has shown the mix of in-person home and virtual care via remote patient monitoring and video conference/phone support is a successful one,” Ms Davies Jones said.
