St Vincent’s, the country’s largest network of non-profit public and private hospitals, will shift half of all its services to at-home or online care by 2030, devoting hospital space to intensive care and emergency wards. Source: The Australian.
St Vincent’s chief executive Chris Blake unveiled the target yesterday, calling it an opportunity to de-escalate the federal Government’s feud with the states and territories over hospital funding arrangements and bed block from underserviced aged care patients.
It will become the first major provider to assign itself a quota for out-of-hospital care arrangements in Australia.
St Vincent’s now has two million appointments a year across its public hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney, 10 private hospitals, and 25 aged care facilities in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. It wants to move half of those appointments to at-home or online care.
“It’s not the answer to everything, because if you need an operation you need to go to a hospital. But there’s a lot of care, including cardiac monitoring, that can be done without coming into the hospital,” Mr Blake said.
“Clearly surgery … and intensive care has to stay at a hospital campus. But what this really says is that hospitals, on average, need more theatres for acute care, and over time we probably (will have) no growth in hospital beds, because more of the care will happen in the home and you’ll get people out faster.
“If we can grow the volume of care outside, by definition, we’re enabling those excellent acute care facilities to get the breathing space they need.”
St Vincent’s estimates 5 per cent of services – or 100,000 appointments – are delivered at home at present. It has an inpatient turnover of 335,000 per year in 3000 hospital beds and 2500 aged care beds, and handles 1.3 million appointments for outpatients.
It hopes to offer one million extra appointments annually by 2030 through its digital and in-home transition.
FULL STORY
St Vincent’s sets 2030 deadline for digital and at-home care shift (By James Dowling, The Australian)
