Demand rising for home-based hospital care

GRAMPIANS Health service’s Hospital Without Walls program is expanding in response to rising demand for home-based hospital care, the program’s manager said.

“We know we’re growing and we’re trying different ways to improve, to innovate, to help patients in the community,” Hospital Without Walls manager, nurse William Ho said.

A recently created department at Grampians Health, Hospital Without Walls brings together a range of services including Grampians Health at Home, Post Acute Care and Grampians Watch with the aim of delivering hospital-quality care in patients’ homes.

Medical teams, nurses, allied health teams, and pharmacists collaborate to deliver coordinated care beyond the ward setting.

This includes acute medical and surgical care, complex conditions management, home-based cancer care, and supporting elderly patients to regain independence with clinical and allied health involvement.

“Whatever the ward is doing, we are providing the same level of care at the patient’s home,” Ho said.

Instead of the patient travelling to the hospital, nurses travel to them, covering distances of up to 35 kilometres from Ballarat and Horsham to reach patients who would otherwise need to make regular trips into hospital.

“Our home-based cancer care stream has saved patients more than 150,000 kilometres of travel over the past five years,” Ho said.

Demand for the Hospital Without Walls is rising and the program is expanding with plans to increase capacity further over the next two years.

The health service has also rolled out a pilot of a virtual discharge clinic that allows patients to return home while awaiting test results, with follow-up consultations conducted via video.

“Regardless of where patients are, we should be able to provide hospital-level care to them,” Ho said.