Western Australia Department of Health

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Fujitsu Services Plus - Delivering flexibility and cost savings to Western Australia's health services

Healthcare providers everywhere face a multitude of challenges - changing demographics and societal expectations, costly emerging technologies, and the changing role of health professionals, to name just a few. At the same time they face ever-greater funding pressures, exacerbated by the increasing costs of labour, equipment and pharmaceuticals. As if that were not enough, healthcare providers are struggling to update their information systems to keep pace with technological innovation and to provide the kind of rapid, integrated information services that patients and health professionals have come to expect.

In this environment, IT outsourcing is not necessarily enough. Traditional outsourcing arrangements do not always provide the flexibility and responsiveness that healthcare providers need. Instead of a technology supplier, you need a technology partner - an organisation prepared to share both the risks and the rewards of developing and delivering IT services. That's why healthcare providers are increasingly turning to collaborative healthcare solutions.

The challenge

The Western Australia Department of Health has around 30,000 staff spread across more than 650 locations. Like other Australian healthcare organisations, it must deal with the challenges posed by a sparse population spread across vast distances and living in a variety of conditions, each with its own set of health problems. That environment presented its own challenges to the Department's IT managers. "The Department had been outsourcing their IT services for a number of years", says Fujitsu's Alliance Manager, Mike Mongey. "But they had begun to find that traditional, contract-driven outsourcing wasn't enough. It was too inflexible; it couldn't keep pace with their changing needs over time." As a result, the Western Australia Department of Health sought a partnership with a flexible IT service provider who would not only share the responsibility for planning and delivering IT services, but also the associated risks and rewards. By entering into a collaborative alliance with their chosen service provider, the Department hoped to:

• Integrate information from various systems and locations
• Realise business value from vendor contracts
• Integrate IT effort with the Department's strategic plan
• Achieve greater operational efficiency

The solution

In June 2000, DMR Consulting (now a fully-owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Australia) and the Western Australia Department of Health formed the InfoHEALTH Alliance, which manages IT services for all West Australian public hospitals and health services. Located in Perth, the InfoHEALTH Alliance employs over 170 staff.

Through these established applications, the Alliance supports areas such as:

• Finance
• Human resources
• Payroll
• Allied health
• Clinical costing
• Emergency departments
• Laboratories
• Medical imaging
• Medical record-tracking
• Patient administration
• Pharmacy
• Theatre management

The InfoHEALTH Alliance provides application and infrastructure development and support, as well as strategic IT consulting services, benefits realisation, project management, change management and enterprise architecture services to Western Australia's hospitals in both metropolitan and rural areas. A number of applications are managed by the Alliance. These applications often leverage third-party software such as Kestrel, Ultra, EDIS and Oracle Financials.

A collaborative approach

Collaboration is a key feature of the InfoHEALTH Alliance. Fujitsu leads a consortium of organisations, including Amcon Solutions Group and ISA Technologies. The Alliance's structure maintains a balance of responsibilities between the organisations. "The Alliance structure encourages flexibility through shared responsibilities in IT planning and delivery", says Mike Mongey. "That means that each member of the alliance shares in both the risks and the rewards." Fujitsu is responsible for the overall management of the Alliance and for service delivery (applications and infrastructure implementation and support). The Western Australia Department of Health's senior management is responsible for the alignment of the Alliance with the Department's business needs, the Strategic Services Group and the financial management and commercial support of the Alliance.

"Our approach has been to provide a solid operational platform for application delivery, while working with the Department to develop a strategic direction and architectural framework", says Jeff Parker, Fujitsu's Associate Consulting Director, Healthcare Services.

Central Wait List Bureau Architecture Project

The Central Wait List Bureau (CWLB) was established by the Western Australia Government to reduce waiting times for elective surgery in Western Australia. The InfoHEALTH Alliance has been working with the CWLB since December 2000 to assist in the development of a fully integrated solution, comprising an information management system and associated streamlined business processes.

The Patient Electronic Analysis Referral Liaison System (PEARLS) was developed to improve the access, storage, validity and strength of information that is required to allow for successful patient management, reporting, monitoring, review and audit. Information from all Western Australian public hospitals and health services is now stored in one easily accessible database. Data is sourced via extracts from metropolitan and rural public hospitals and contains inpatient and outpatient wait lists; wait lists for deferrals, reschedules, post-admission cancellations and removals; admission and discharge; and morbidity.

The former Western Australian Minister for Health, Mr Bob Kucera, said of the PEARLS system, "This system will deliver major efficiencies in the health system and help identify which hospitals and health services have the shortest waiting times. It will also ensure that patients waiting for surgery can be treated in the shortest possible period of time. The efficiencies that this project has delivered are having a positive impact on the availability of information and will result in significant administrative savings."