Authors (including presenting author) :
Ms. Fung WC(1), Dr. Ong KL(1), Mr. Wong Billy(1)
Affiliation :
A&E, POH/NTWC
Introduction :
Due to the rising of aging and chronic disease population, A&E service demand was kept growing up recent years. To ensure our emergency care is timely delivered to our patients according to their severity, a pledge enhancement programme was started in our department since 2016.
Objectives :
To provide a timely and professional emergency care for patients by maintaining an accurate triage and achieving our pledge target especially for those categorized as urgent patients.
Methodology :
The programme included two parts; i. Workflow modification A workgroup was setup at 2016-17 including consultants, senior medical officers, nursing representatives to discuss and modify the existing workflow of urgent cases consultation to achieve our pledge target. A modified workflow was implemented since 2017 with an early notification to floor in-charge when accumulation of urgent cases and deployed designated medical officer to provide early assessment. After the workflow modification completed, the workgroup was evolved to triage enhancement workgroup to continue monitoring our triage performance and urgent cases consultation. ii. Triage monitoring The workgroup was set up since 2018 to review statistics including triage capturing time and appropriateness of triage etc. Indeed, statistics about pledge performance of urgent cases would also be reviewed in order to maintain our pledge performance.
Result & Outcome :
For the pledge performance of urgent cases, the percentage is improved from around 80 % in 2015 to around 92-95% in 2019-2020. For triage performance, the triage capturing rate within 10 minutes was kept around 92-94% and reach 97-98% in 2019-2020. And medical officer’s feedback is positive about the monitoring role of the workgroup. In concluded, the pledge performance of urgent cases was improved after implementation of the modified workflow. The triage enhancement workgroup also shown their effectiveness in maintaining an accurate and appropriateness of triage.