Mrs Brooke Webb1, Mrs Jacinta Re1
1Monash Health, Dandenong, Australia
Biography:
Brooke Webb Social Work Manager for Dandenong and Casey Hospital at Monash Health in Victoria.
Jacinta Re, Head of Profession for Social Work and Spiritual Care at Monash Health in Victoria.
Abstract:
Social workers and Care Coordinators working in the emergency department (ED) were seeing a pattern of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants with exhausted NDIS funds and service providers refusing to take them back to their facility, with no medical reason for presenting to the ED. The NDIS providers felt the NDIS plans would be prioritised if the participant was admitted to hospital.
Social Work lead key stakeholder meetings to unpack the emerging themes, using cases to determine current state issues, their roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders in the ED space, community and inpatient teams.
We set up an ED NDIS rapid response pathway with key stakeholders in ED and a Teams chat with both ED, inpatient and community stakeholders to identify, escalate and manage within the ED space in a timely manner to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. We engaged the ED Medical Directors, Director of Clinical Operations (DCO) for senior decision making and other key senior decision makers across our health network to escalate and problem solve in a timely manner.
We found 75% of these patients were discharged from ED without admission and their average length of stay was approximately 24hours.
Next step in this initiative is to compare NDIS participants who were admitted for the same reasons and those that were discharged from ED to review and refine the ED NDIS rapid response pathway.