March 2, 2023The Preadmission Clinic at Northern Hospital Epping has introduced a new business model, which will provide a significant increase in capacity and multidisciplinary care for patients awaiting elective surgery.
Located in the Community Health building, clinics will take place Monday to Friday, in a dedicated preadmission clinic space.
Under the new business model, patients who are awaiting elective surgery will be screened with a health questionnaire and assigned to a pathway that reflects their risk level in the perioperative period. For those patients who are having more involved surgery, they may need to attend one of the three levels of clinics under the new business model: high risk preadmission clinic, anaesthesia preadmission clinic and complex-decision making clinic.
The new Preadmission Clinic process is designed to increase the capacity and capability of the perioperative medicine service, ensuring patients are in the best possible health prior to surgery. The aim is to see fewer complications after surgery, get patients home sooner, and ensure a safe transition back to patients’ usual activities.
The new business model will achieve this by increasing clinic appointments by 50 per cent, more than doubling the number of consultant-lead clinics and introducing multidisciplinary team assessments in all clinics.
“We are excited to be joined by our pharmacy colleagues in preadmission clinic and are grateful for their guidance and expertise in the perioperative management of medications,” said Northern Health, Perioperative Medicine Lead, Jamie Mackay.
“Malnutrition is unfortunately very common among patients undergoing surgery and leads to a much greater risk of infection and poor wound healing. By including dieticians in the preadmission team, we can identify the patients at risk and ensure they have the best possible care to improve their nutrition at the time of their surgery.”
Northern Health, Deputy Director, Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine, Dr Amanda Baric, says that she is very excited to be part of this new model and she looks forward to better patient outcomes at Northern Health.
“This new preadmission model will allow for greater access to comprehensive assessment of our increasingly complex preoperative patients. The multidisciplinary model provides us with an opportunity to work with multiple disciplines to improve fitness for surgery and recovery after surgical care.”
“It’s been a privilege to be involved in the implementation of the first multidisciplinary preadmission clinic at Northern Health with the aim to provide safer, reliable and coordinated care for our preoperative community,” said Northern Health Active Elective Surgery Access Manager, Shan S Law.
Pictured: The Preadmission Clinic team
