SWARH - A Revolutionary Concept
General
Tuesday, 16 December 2003
Greater Green Triangle representative Pat McAloon (left), with South West Alliance of Rural Health representatives Mark Johnstone (middle) and Robert Quantrelle (right).
Four years ago a revolutionary
Greater Green Triangle representative Pat McAloon (left), with South West Alliance of Rural Health representatives Mark Johnstone (middle) and Robert Quantrelle (right).
Four years ago a revolutionary communications concept based on a virtual Organisation linking health care providers in the state's western half was seen as a rather risky proposal.
Since then, the South West Alliance of Rural Health (SWARH) has been credited with saving lives, linking remote health centres to specialist city medical facilities and delivering major cost savings into the bargain.
Now used as a national role model for other health networks around Australia, SWARH recently received some home-grown recognition for its achievements by being judged winner of the Business Innovation category of the 2003 Warrnambool Moyne Business Achievement Awards.
SWARH chief information officer Garry Druitt welcomed the acknowledgement for staff involved in the network and at the Warrnambool Hospital which is the hub of the system.
"It is very good to receive some recognition in Warrnambool itself for what SWARH has been doing over the past four years. This is the first award we have won in the Warrnambool region," he said.
"At the time, it (SWARH) was seen as very risky by other providers, but the CEOs at this hospital and throughout the region were very supportive of taking that risk. So what was thought to be risky has turned out to become mainstream," he said. Covering about 60,000 sq. kilometres, the SWARH alliance connects all public acute hospitals and associated health services in the region from west of Melbourne to the South Australian border. A high speed telecommunications network connects all member sites to each other and to Melbourne in a unique regional infrastructure.
Mr Druitt said SWARH was the first Health Organisation in the world to replace its traditional telephone system with network-based Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. This had resulted in telephone cost savings of between 28 and 50 per cent according to the level of implementation by members. He said travel expenses had also been reduced by up to 30 per cent and video links slashed by 90 per cent under the system. Mr Druitt said patient care was a major winner from the system with specialist doctors and services in larger city hospitals now accessible to patients in remote areas. He said he was aware of several cases in which lives had been saved through the service.
Virtual patient visiting was also now becoming a reality, and in the latest development, young patients at the Warrnambool hospital's children's ward will become part of the virtual audience at the Royal Children's Hospital's Starlight Room entertainment next year.
Mr Druitt said SWARH was now a national business role model and was being replicated in other Victorian regions of Gippsland and Hume in the next 12 months and in the Grampians and Loddon/Mallee in the next two years. SWARH was also helping to build a model in the North-east of New South Wales which would be replicated throughout the state.
By JENNY McLAREN:
Warrnambool Standard Business News, Tuesday December 09 2003