Monash Health is improving the way we journey patients through our health system – ensuring the right clinician is referring the right care at the right time – to simplify clinical decision-making, improve our efficiency, and ultimately deliver a better and more efficient experience for our patients.
A better journey for patients
We aim to streamline referral and access processes, to make the patient journey more efficient and improve their experience through the health system and return home sooner.
A simpler, streamlined process, making clinical decisions easier
We are improving the referral pathways into our service, to enable medical consultation and assessment clinicians to work to the breadth of their expertise, and make the referral process more responsive to demand, and improved consistency and transparency for acute and emergency teams.
Improved health system efficiency
This access improvement has been co-designed with the people who work in the system to refer and facilitate access to comprehensive, multidisciplinary aged and rehabilitation care, after an acute or emergency presentation.
The reform will embed processes to promote home-based care, offer a more streamlined referral pathway, and provide more transparency in waitlist data.
Information for referring teams
What is happening?
We are streamlining the process for patients to access Aged and Rehabilitation (subacute) Care (ARC).
Why is this happening?
Aligning with the principles of Monash Health’s Excellence in Timely Care initiative, this reform is focused on:
- Prioritising care in patients’ homes, where appropriate and preferred
- Streamlining referrals and the processes to access Aged and Rehabilitation Care
- Providing more transparent and visible data
What will be different?
The Rehabilitation Aged Liaison Service (RALS) name is rebranding to the Aged and Rehabilitation Access Service (ARAS).
There will be two distinct referral pathways to access aged and rehabilitation care services and expertise:
- Medical consult to rehabilitation medicine or geriatric medicine is for when patients would benefit from a medical review
- Referral to ARAS – Assessment Clinician is for when:
i. the patient has completed their acute-level care (or will have within the next 48 hours) (i.e., acute level interventions/specialist referrals) and requires follow up ARC or TCP (for non-weightbearing patients), or
ii.early support with complex discharge planning is needed.
Medical specialists and Assessment Clinicians will continue to work closely, using:
- Embedded decision-making workflows to support patient and carer involvement and promote an at-home-first pathway.
- Simplified processes to reduce duplication and variation in practice, and to promote working at top of scope.
- Improved information capture for continuous improvement and to build trust in the system through transparency.
- Improved understanding of service demand and new business rules to promote responsiveness.
This Access Reform will be live from Wednesday 9 August, with more information to follow in the coming days.
Approved by Stuart Cavill, Interim Deputy Chief Operating Officer Kingston, Aged and Rehabilitation and Adult Inpatient Allied Health