New High Acuity Discharge Clinic (HADC) at Monash Health

From Monday 8 November, Monash Health is opening a High Acuity Discharge Clinic (HADC) at Clinic M, Monash Medical Centre, Clayton.

The new High Acuity Discharge Clinic (HADC) will provide some of our non-COVID patients with high-acuity illness a quick follow-up process/review and enable them to wait for tests and/or resolution of illness at home. It will also increase our inpatient/bed capacity and support our increased role in caring for COVID-19 positive patients.

Location

Clinic M, Monash Medical Centre, Clayton

Opening and operating hours

The new High Acuity Discharge Clinic (HADC) will open at 8am on Monday, 8 November.

The HADC will be open from 8am – 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Appointment types

Appointments can be booked as either Face-to-Face (F2F) at Clinic M or via Telehealth. Appointments will be divided into morning and afternoon sessions as follows:

Supporting high-acuity patients

This clinic will support the early discharge of some of our non-COVID, high-acuity patients who cannot be completely discharged into General Practitioner (GP) care, and who are not appropriate for Hospital in the Home (HiTH).

The HADC will support the review of these patients within seven (7) days of discharge to confirm resolving their illness and/or reviewing critical tests and investigations.

Because of their acuity, some of these patients may require readmission to hospital. This will be arranged via direct admission from the clinic (the clinic nurse will call the bed manager).

Clinic demand and utility will be monitored and reviewed, and the model continuously improved.

Referral requirements and process

All referrals require approval of the overseeing consultant/senior registrar and the following requirements need to be met:

• Ambulatory
• Admitted on the ward or patient assessed by inpatient team in ED
• In principle, will require one visit to the clinic then discharge to GP or transfer care to specialist service
• Pending investigations booked

To access an appointment, Registrars or Consultants, please call 0436 618 550 to request an appointment time that suits their patients (and is convenient for their team to attend the review). If calling out of hours, please leave a message on voicemail with patient details, date required, preferred time, and your contact details.

An internal referral via SMR to  High Acuity Discharge Clinic speciality  with the following information is also required:

• Name, designation, contact details of referring doctor
• Review requirements and outstanding tests
• F2F/telehealth appointment
• Approving consultant name
• Flag interpreter requirements

For a full breakdown of the roles and responsibilities of the Registrar, HADC admin and HADC nurse along the HADC patient journey, download the High Acuity Discharge Clinic (HADC) Workflow poster.

Contact and feedback

If you have any questions, or would like to provide feedback on the HADC, please email Marina Cauchy and/or Lynden Roberts 

Approved by Anjali Dhulia, Chief Medical Officer and Cath Cronin, Acting Chief Operating Officer.