A 96-BED, $87.5 million private hospital to be built at Hervey Bay on Queensland’s Fraser Coast will be Australia’s “first fully integrated digital hospital”, says UnitingCare Health.
Scheduled to open in August 2014, St Stephen’s Hospital will come with advanced wireless technologies allowing all medical records, x-ray and pathology results, nurse call systems, phone systems and patient medical devices, such as blood pressure machines and infusion pumps, to be integrated.
Richard Royle, executive director of UnitingCare Health, said the technology would provide accessibility to “doctors and nurses anywhere in the hospital, whether at the bedside, or remotely on tablets, mobile phones, laptops or mobile computers on wheels”.
“For the first time clinicians will have information at their fingertips which will enable faster and more efficient decision making”, he said.
The result would be improved sharing of information and results with patients, and less time wasted “trying to find other staff or equipment”, said the hospital’s director of nursing, Jill O’Brien.
“The digital capability of St Stephen’s and the corresponding change and innovation in work practices is an exciting challenge for our clinicians”, she said.
The federal government’s Health and Hospitals Fund will provide $47 million towards the cost of construction.
- Cate Swannell