Hunter - Paediatric Ambulatory Care Service
This project did not commence until July 2002.
The service provided enhanced support and services for paediatric patients in the Maitland/Dungog Health service in the following ways:
- Providing home based/short stay nursing care for children, where their condition permitted, living in the Maitland local government and surrounding areas that refer to the Paediatric Unit at The Maitland/Dungog Health Service. Initially, this resulted in an early discharge program from the Paediatric Unit, focusing on three DRGs: Asthma, Bronchiolitis and Gastroenteritis
- Facilitating early discharge from the hospital by supporting certain procedures and treatments to be attended in the home
- Avoiding hospitalisation of children where care could be provided in the home or as short stay within the Paediatric Unit
The children in rural communities served by the Lower Hunter Sector benefited tremendously from this enhanced service, reducing admissions to hospital and separation from their families.
The success of this project has been measured by:
- The passion and commitment shown by the community to try to enable the service to continue permanently
- Provision of 1692 phone calls to provide follow-up nursing services
- Initiation and participation in anaphylaxis health promotion and education program
- 332 children were seen
- 3070 occasions of service were performed
- Reduction in Length of stay to below peer standards for those children suitable for outreach nursing
- The circulation of a satisfaction survey to parents and professionals
which had a 30% response rate. The following were the outcomes:
- 87.5% of respondents indicated that having the PACS service available made discharge from hospital easier
- 87.5% of respondents indicated it was very helpful to have the PACS nurse visit or phone them at home
- 87.5% of respondents indicated that they thought the service was excellent overall
- 100% of respondents were confident in the skills and knowledge of the nurses providing the PACS service
The lessons learnt from this project were:
- This project commenced with a focus on acute care needs and reducing the length of stay for children and their families admitted to the Paediatric Unit of Maitland Hospital. However, a gap was identified in existing services for children with chronic and complex care needs. This particular group quite often have recurrent acute care needs that were able to be met by PACS without the need for hospitalisation and disruption to their family
- There is a need for both an acute and long-term chronic and complex care service for patients in the Maitland/Dungog Health Service catchment area
Unfortunately, the service was unable to attract ongoing funding from their sector or area health service and was forced to close at the end of the enhancement funding period.