Software to help determine hospital’s treatment priorities

Southland Hospital will begin using a new software tool to schedule and prioritise appointments from today.

The tool was developed by the Ministry of Health and is designed to help district health boards reach their Elective Service Performance Indicator (ESPI) targets.

ESPIs were implemented by the ministry to ensure district health boards treat enough people and reduce waiting times.

The new tool will schedule appointments based on the urgency of a patient’s complaint and how long they’ve been waiting to see a surgeon.

The software will allow the hospital to make faster decisions about the number of referrals it will accept based on the time and space it has available for specific procedures.

When deciding whether to accept a referral, the doctor will need to fill in a standardised questionnaire and collect information about the patient’s quality of life.

Those in need of urgent care will go straight through to specialists. Appointments for the remaining referrals will be sorted in order of priority.

The Southern District Health Board’s executive director of specialist services, Patrick Ng, said a specialist will still doublecheck the computer-generated schedule to make sure the software made the correct decision.

The tool has already been implemented in Dunedin Hospital’s orthopaedics department.

The Southern DHB hopes to use it to track whether patients eligible for surgery are treated within 120 days of confirmation.