Patient Flow
Definition
A management tool that streamlines the movement of patients through a healthcare facility. Patient flow systems track and coordinate admissions, transfers, treatments and discharges in real-time to improve efficiency, reduce delays and enhance the patient experience.
Both public and private hospitals utilise patient flow systems, though private hospitals often include a communication feature for real-time updates. This could be a text message during a surgical admission to notify a patient’s next of kin when the patient enters the operating theatre, moves into the recovery room, is transferred to a ward or is ready to receive visitors.
Standards and specifications
General requirements
Cyber security
The software must demonstrate adherence to the ‘Essential 8’ cyber security principles.
Core requirements
Standards for identification
The software must:
- support the use of Healthcare Identifiers in accordance with the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010
- support adherence to Patient Identification best practices as outlined by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
- be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service Business-2-Business web services.
Where the system stores a local directory for Healthcare Providers it must allow for the storing of:
- Healthcare Provider Identifier-Organisation (HPI-O) numbers
- Healthcare Provider Identifier-Individual (HPI-I) numbers.
National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards
Implementation of NSQHS is mandated in all hospitals, day procedure services and public dental services across Australia.
The system must support adherence to:
- best practices related to Informed Consent
- all relevant National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards in accordance with the intended scope of the system being procured. These may include, but not limited to the following standards:
- Partnering with Consumers Standard
- Communicating for Safety Standard.
Other Standards
International
The system should comply with:
- the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) white paper Achieving Hospital-wide Patient Flow.
National
Buyers should refer to the:
- Australian Digital Health Agency’s Standards Catalogue, specifically Access IHE Patient Care Coordination Technical Framework Supplement - Bed Management (BED) - Rev 1.2 - Trial implementation
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care’s patient flow design and set up
- Queensland Health – Clinical Excellence Commission’s showcase and strategy for implementing patient flow.
Connections to National Systems
Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service)
If the software is expected to deal with healthcare identifiers (e.g. in a hospital environment) then it should either:
- be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service, or
Where the enterprise utilises an enterprise-wide system for discovery and validation of Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) the software should:
- be able to manage and interface with this middleware in order to enable discovery and validation of Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI).
Conformance
HI service
The software should:
- have production access to the Health Identifiers Service.
Healthcare Information Provider Services (HIPS)
If the system connects to the Healthcare Information Provider Service (HIPS) middleware product, the system must:
- conform with the HIPS conformance profile V1.
State and territory requirements
The following state and territory requirements must be upheld based on location.
| State | Theme | Link |
|---|---|---|
| ACT | Privacy | Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act 1997 (ACT) |
| Territory Records Act 2002 (ACT) | ||
| Information Privacy Act 2014 | Acts | ||
| NSW | Privacy | NSW Privacy Laws |
| Requirements for consent | ||
| Clinical | Medication Handling in NSW Public Health Facilities | |
| Support adherence to Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation | ||
| NSW Ministry of Health TG184 ‘Criteria for Issuing Non-handwritten (Computer Generated) Prescriptions’ | ||
| Medication Handling policy | ||
| NT | Privacy | Refer to federal legislation for privacy |
| QLD | Privacy | Privacy legislation in Queensland |
| Informed Consent | ||
| SA | Privacy | Refer to federal legislation for privacy |
| TAS | Privacy | Refer to federal legislation for privacy |
| VIC | Clinical | Statewide pathology and imaging catalogues |
| Informed consent and presumption of capacity | ||
| Health data standards and systems | ||
| Digital health standards and guidelines | ||
| Privacy | Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 | |
| WA | Privacy | Refer to federal legislation for privacy |
| Consent to treatment policy |