Ms Lucy Whitelaw1, Mrs Jessica Bermudez, Mrs Jacinta Re
1Monash Health, Clayton, Australia
Biography:
Lucy Whitelaw is a Social Worker by background and is employed as the Allied Health Informatics Advisor at Monash Health. She has her Master in Health Management, focusing on Digital Health innovations.
Abstract:
Purpose:
The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016) highlighted gaps in family violence data across the service system, necessitating a standardised documentation workflow and efficient method to capture and measure family violence risk.
Nature and scope:
A multi-disciplinary approach was used with leadership from Social Work, the Family Violence Team and Allied Health Informatics. We took proactive steps to co-design fit-for-purpose, user friendly Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) documentation tools in our inpatient, outpatient and community electronic health record systems.
Collaborating with consumer and clinician stakeholders, internal business intelligence (BI) and EMR & Informatics teams, we then built a BI Family Violence dashboard, consolidating data across these multiple systems, in real time.
Issues:
Within our large tertiary health organisation, disrupting deeply embedded unsystematic family violence documentation workflows was challenging. Multiple electronic systems created fragmented documentation and data collection which was difficult to capture within the dashboard. Additionally, ensuring clinicians documented in the newly embedded tools to enable accurate dashboard data required significant change implementation including rapid improvement cycles.
Outcome:
This innovation allows us to transform our health systems and services by:
– Understanding the rate of family violence identification/disclosure and our clinical response
– Measuring the level of risk family violence poses to the organisation
– Embedding continuous improvement into our practice
– Ensuring teams are accountable for their actions and performance
– Identifying gaps in processes/systems
– Targeting education and upskilling
– Workforce development and enhancement
– Enhancing patient outcomes
– Effective risk management and harm minimisation