Telstra Health secures a comprehensive drug information contract from Te Whatu Ora and more instructions
Te Whatu Ora extends medicine database contract with Telstra Health
Te Whatu Ora has extended its long-term contract with Telstra Health for its managed clinical content services.
Before being consolidated under Te Whatu Ora in 2022, former district health boards in New Zealand used clinical content including access to Micromedex, AusDI and DRTC.
Telstra Health said its contract recently transitioned under Te Whatu Ora to “continue to enable better healthcare workflows (by) ensuring seamless access to critical medicine information and supporting confident and timely decision-making between healthcare providers.”
SA will roll out free virtual mental health services for young people
The virtual care service for children and adolescents at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital of South Australia will soon cover mental health care following new government funding.
The South African government recently announced A$5 million ($3.3 million) in funding under its 2024-2025 budget to introduce new mental health programs for young people, including a pediatric virtual mental health service.
Based on a press release, the free service will digitally connect parents to a care team that can provide medical advice to children aged six months to 18 years via video.
NSW ambulance matrix upgrade
New South Wales is also upgrading its ambulance patient allocation matrix system with new funding.
Under the 2024-2025 NSW budget, A$15.1 million ($10 million) was set aside over four years to upgrade the ambulance dashboard, which is used to identify the most appropriate emergency department for a patient to be taken to transferred. The funding is part of the NSW government’s A$480 million ED relief package.
According to a press release, the improved matrix called NewGen Matrix will be able to take into account the capacity of nearby emergency departments, a patient’s clinical condition and travel times. The existing ambulance matrix, which has been in use for almost two decades, does not provide paramedics with insight into potential emergency department delays because it relies on limited, static data input.
“This critical ambulance matrix upgrade will integrate live data from across our public health system in real time to help paramedics transport patients to emergency departments where they can be treated as quickly and appropriately as possible,” the NSW Health Minister said. Ryan Park.
The new dashboard, which will be rolled out across metropolitan and rural NSW late next year, is expected to help more than 2,000 emergency department patients avoid a secondary hospital transfer.
Tāmaki Health moves to the cloud for workforce management
Tāmaki Health, one of New Zealand’s largest private primary healthcare providers, has turned to the cloud for workforce management.
The company recently engaged AMS, a local provider of IT solutions for workforce and insurance management, to implement its cloud-based “roster-to-pay” solution, AMS Pulse. The system will help manage Tāmaki Health’s complex workforce and accurately track costs across more than 40 primary care practices and urgent care clinics, while ensuring compliance with ever-changing employment regulations.
Tāmaki Health has already gone live with the AMS Pulse payroll system; In the next phase, the self-service portal and the functionalities for scheduling and award interpretation will be implemented.