Hi All,
Came across this while looking for something else. I believe this would be really useful for Te Whatu Ora, and would give some transparency to the current issues that everyone is facing.
If it reduces the number of communications between patients and call centres, or could aid GPs in their treatment plans, or provide the patient with the opportunity of going private at the GP referral stage it could help?
Should be fairly straightforward to set up nationwide?
Thoughts?
I agree that more transparency is needed given the news over the last few days - certainly a more accessible version of the ESPIs should be available.
I’d be interested to know what people actually do with that information once they have it - my jaded expectation would be a lot of phone calls to the service once each person’s wait time exceeds the average.
I think that consumers are probably not really aware of what the wait times are supposed to be or what an ESPI actually is. 
Expectation probably varies due to previous experience in the system. I feel we need to treat every patient like its their first visit to a healthcare facility and assume that they know nothing of the process to ensure that everyone understands.
I guess this type of system would help achieve equity to access of information too.
Terrific site easy to navigate and the information is provided in a easy to understand way.
I really liked it, and could see it working well for Te Whatu Ora.
I think it would be much better if tied to the persons actual referral?
Jon
Agree… I wonder if health navigator would be interested?
Guess that could work, but it would be trickier to seek the information if you weren’t the patient.
Thinking that GP’s and other healthcare providers, who could see the wait times and allow them to think differently about the next step or an interim measure in the patients treatment or perhaps the pathway so they can recommend for example going privately if its suitable? Might alleviate some of the increased referral numbers received.
I teach an undergrad course in health informatics to Bachelor of Health Science students. One of the assignments is to write a business case that identifies a problem and proposes a software solution to solve it. This and triage wait times often come up. Just knowing where you are in the timeline makes a big difference. Knowing what to do before/at certain intersections (e.g., first specialist appointment) and having reminders makes a difference. It might be that we shift the calls to the call centre from “have you received my referral yet” to “I don’t understand the next instruction” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If a deadline becomes late, it’s easy to notify the patient and indicate why and “what’s next”.
Agree, would be good in the pathway.
Do keep in mind that the current norm for Te Whatu Ora (at least in the South Island) is to notify patients about anything via snail mail. And if you peek into the quality of the data & the systems for managing appointments and waitlists you will likely get a fright.
We’ve got plenty of basics to address before doing any fancy stuff!
I think this would work at the higher level rather than at the patient level and would at least transparency of wait times to patients.
But I agree @NathanK , we don’t digitise enough of our patient comms.
I have heard of feedback from patients who would love to receive all their documentation electronically. Which could have an impact on non attendance and therefore outcomes
It would be great to be able to offer this to patients who want it, if they prefer snail mail, they can continue to receive it that way. Here’s hoping for patient portals to become much more common.
Primary care has portals and yet at the tertiary healthcare level, they seem oddly missing.
I don’t know if we would be anywhere near ready for a national patient portal like the NHS.
There’s this thing called digital citizenship whereby almost everything that matters is done digitally, e.g., banking, booking a flight, buying tickets to the theatre, purchasing food. People have got used to the transparency (even old people) in general life, so they are disappointed and confused when the health sector can’t give them transparency to help them track their appointments. It’s time we got this right, and doing it nationally would be the simplest way (contrary to our experience). Someone surely is working on something like this in the software world…