By Paul Hemsley

Web based technology designed to schedule patient times and manage queues has been installed in Australian hospitals after previous distribution in the United States.

The Sydney based NEXA Group distributes the system called Q-Flow, which also monitors the amount of time staff spend with each customer to improve patient scheduling and reduce waiting times.

According to the NEXA Group, surgeons and other staff can check appointment schedules and patient flow remotely from a smart phone.

Queensland public hospital, the Prince Charles Hospital is the most recent buyer and installed Q-Flow from a $139 million upgrade.

It currently assists the staff at Victoria's Cabrine Medical Imaging Department to manage 100000 annual patient procedures.

Prince Charles Hospital nurse unit manager for private practice, transit lounge and specialist outpatients, Belinda Faulkner said the reaction has been “so far mixed”.

“Some patients can't understand why we changed, they are used to how it worked before; some felt that it has streamlined them and their time waiting; the staff have been very excepting and have worked very hard on training to make the roll out as smooth as possible,” Ms Faulkner said.

According to Ms Faulkner, QLD Health funded the system as part of the funding allocated for the hospital redevelopment.

“We issued a tender as part of this process and after rigorous analysis of the various systems, chose the Q-Flow system,” she said.

NEXA Group sales director, Bill Thompson said the system is not a replacement for face-to-face interaction.

“It’s a way for these hospitals to dramatically improve their patient flow and appointment scheduling, enabling clinicians and other staff to spend more face-to-face time with patients and recapture that personal aspect of things,” Mr Thompson said.

He said the system is about automating the work before there would be patient interaction.

“So what Q-Flow allows hospitals to do is to automate as much as possible before the actual interaction, such as scheduling appointments, reception and check-in, matching patient flow, then to spend more time actually focusing on the patients themselves,” he said.

According to Mr Thompson, local councils have been using Q-Flow due to a “lack of audibility and transparency of what happens in their front-of-office”.

“Their call centres are loaded with reports that can provide a view, but their front offices have nothing, so all these councils are adopting the Q-Flow solution to provide that sort of service to their walk-in customers,” Mr Thompson said.

Patient privacy is protected with tickets using a numbering system, which announces the patient’s arrival to the appropriate clinicians via the web based service.

Mr Thompson said the security system is embedded within Q-Flow with enhanced security levels.

“The security development had to take into account parts of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in the United States - all about security of information,” he said.

This law covers administrative simplification provisions, requires the establishment of national standards and security for electronic health transactions.

He said there is not an equivalent of this law in Australia, but “certainly the Australian Privacy Act would be the closest thing”.

Ms Faulkner said there is certainly a future potential for enabling better management of patient flow.

“We will also be in a position to use the data collected from the system in the future to better analyse our patient flow.

“This potentially has the benefit of enabling us to improve our appointment scheduling as it will provide us with a clearer picture on patient flow from entry to exit,” she said.