Metro North Health Queensland Case Study: 4 Times Faster Waitlist Audit Process and Improved Patient Experience

Metro North Health is the largest of 16 Hospital and Health Services that provides public health services in Queensland. Metro North Health has a focus on collaboration with healthcare partners and investment in systems to deliver services to a population approaching 900,000, from north of the Brisbane River to north of Kilcoy.

Metro North has partnered with Personify Care to improve the efficiency of their outpatient waitlist audits using digital patient pathways. 

The team has automated the outpatient administrative waitlist audit process across 12 specialties at 5 sites. This has involved the digitisation of two previous systems, a paper based audit system and a Health Contact Centre, into one seamless digital check in.

Through the digital waitlist pathway, Metro North has reduced administrative workload and streamlined the process of identifying those still in need of care, and those who no longer require an appointment. The use of technology has not only improved staff workloads but has enhanced patient access to care through higher response rates and overall improved management of long-wait patients.

 Meredith Nelson, Acting Nursing Director of Metro North Health (Queensland) shares that; "Although long-wait lists are audited to mitigate risks to patient outcomes, old audit processes were manual and time consuming. 

The digital pathway has improved access to patients in need with real time visibility to the true state of the waitlist."

"Previously auditing our waitlist could take in excess of 30 minutes per patient and the whole audit process could take months. This has been dramatically reduced with the end to end process now taking less than 2 weeks. The pathway does the heavy lifting for us and has a very high patient response rate." 

Time Savings: Auditing waitlists manually took up to 30 minutes per patient. With the automated pathway, this process is drastically reduced, allowing staff to focus on other critical tasks.

• 4 times faster than previous audit system 
• "previously the waitlist audit process could take two months to complete, now this is done in less than 2 weeks"

Improved Patient Experience: Over 95% of patients reported a positive experience using the digital platform.

Accurate Identification of Patient Needs: The platform allows for real-time identification of patients who no longer need to remain on the waitlist, streamlining the process of identifying those still in need of clinical care.

Positive Staff Feedback: Hospital staff appreciate the reduction in manual workload, with many praising the efficiency of the digital audit system.

• 53% cheaper than paper-based audit system
• 67% cheaper than the Health Contact Centre system
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By leveraging the Personify Care platform, the acceptability, accuracy, and feasibility of patients can be rapidly determined with minimal staff intervention. Personify Care's platform was configured to contact long-wait patients based on a set of pre-defined criteria and ask a series of questions to determine ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to demographics.

The pathway was implemented to improve access to patients in need with real time visibility to the true state of the waitlist.

"More than 95% of patients reported an "overall positive experience" using the solution.", shared Meredith Nelson. 

The audit process digitisation was initially co-designed and coordinated by the central Metro North team. It is now being decentralised, allowing specialty teams to manage their own audit pathways.

 The experience includes four key steps: 

1. Uploading the Waitlist: The hospital uploaded a list of long-wait patients into Personify Care's platform.
2. Patient Invitations: Patients were contacted via secure link from Metro North, inviting them to participate in the audit.
3. Secure Identification: Patients verified their identity through multi-factor authentication and provided consent to share their information electronically.
4. Patient Assessment: Patients responded to a series of questions aimed at determining their ongoing need for clinical care and unreported changes to their health status or demographics.

This streamlined approach not only saved critical time for healthcare staff but also provided a more accurate and up-to-date picture of the outpatient waitlist. 

The trend of using digital pathways for waitlist audits is growing globally as healthcare systems continue to embrace technology post-pandemic.