From Thursday, 23 June 2022, we are commissioning Ward 1 at Moorabbin Hospital as a new General Medicine inpatient ward.
Ward 1 will provide care for General Medical patients, while improving access for tertiary patients with higher-level or complex care needs by creating capacity across the organisation.
An additional workforce has been recruited for Ward 1 across all relevant clinical and clinical support areas. As part of this change, a General Medicine team from Monash Medical Centre, Clayton, will also transfer across to Moorabbin Hospital.
Additional medical resources, particularly out of hours, will provide increased clinical support with timely assessment and management at our Moorabbin site and will ensure fewer off-site transfers.
Why now, and what are the benefits?
Rapid changes and adjustments as part of our COVID-19 response earlier this year meant we had to delay this change temporarily.
Significant consultation and planning have gone into this change so we can:
- Utilise capacity at Moorabbin Hospital.
- Improve access for higher-level or complex care patients to our acute hospitals/sites.
- Reduce wait times in our Emergency Departments (and, as a result, improve patient (and employee) experience).
- Enhance our after-hours medical and clinical support coverage at Moorabbin Hospital.
- Ensure our employees (and new recruits) return to their substantive areas of work.
Which patients are suitable for transfers to Moorabbin General Medicine?
The following patients fit the admission criteria and can be prioritised for transfer to Ward 1, Moorabbin Hospital:
- Patients who are haemodynamically stable (unlikely to require HDU, ICU);
- Patients who do not require multiple specialty unit consultations during admission.
A non-exhaustive list of patients that would be suitable (and not suitable) for transfer to Ward 1 has been circulated to our clinicians.
What’s changing at Moorabbin?
Various clinical services have been utilising Ward 1 to treat their patients. From this week, and with the commissioning of Ward 1, service and location changes at Moorabbin will be as follows:
- Hospital in the Home (HiTH) – HITH Clinic will remain at Moorabbin and have relocated to rooms 105 to 112 on Level 2.
- Chemotherapy Day Unit (CDU) – the CDU chairs that were used in Ward 1 have been managed back into the main unit on Level 2.
- Urology nurse-led Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) administration and trial of Void Clinic – the urology nurse-led clinics will be managed by the Surgical Ward and Day Procedure Centre as they were prior to December 2018.
Approved by Martin Keogh, Chief Operating Officer