Victoria’s West Hume Region will roll out DXC Technology’s Care Suite patient administration system (PAS) to replace the existing system used in its five health services in what is one of the first enterprise hospital systems in Australia to be delivered on an as-a-service cloud model.

The West Hume Region (WHR) joins the Central Hume Partnership (CHP) in implementing Care Suite and the two regions will work collaboratively on the roll out. Central Hume announced in February that it had chosen Care Suite with the aim of going live in July 2021. West Hume is scheduled to go live in September 2021.

The West Hume Region comprises five rural health services – Goulburn Valley Health (GV Health), Nathalia, Cobram and Numurkah Health, The Kilmore and District Hospital, Yea and District Memorial Hospital and Seymour Health – covering approximately 380 beds.

Matt Sharp, chief executive at GV Health, which is the lead agency for WHR, said the roll-out was a key part of GV Health’s digital strategy and will provide patients and staff with a platform to build upon and enable wider, future clinical services integration.

“It is exciting on two levels because GV Health is in the middle of a $229 million capital redevelopment, which will result in a new inpatient unit building, a new emergency department and a new dialysis unit, as well as refurbishments across other, key inpatient areas,” Mr Sharp said.

“We are also in the process of reviewing service planning and master planning for the next stage of our redevelopment. It’s fantastic to have the ability to have new facilities to deliver services and provide care to people in the region more broadly, but a big enabler of that of course is technology.

“What will allow us to provide improved care and hopefully better outcomes is if we have a better technological platform to be able to build from and connect patient care with partner health services in the region.”

The West Hume Region currently uses a PAS that is reaching end of life, of which there are a number of instances. GV Health chief information officer and project director Jorge Silveira, who is also the director of the Central Hume project, said the new PAS platform will support the improvement of service integration across the region.

“One very important aspect with this particular platform is it allows us to move from a network of services to a network that enables information flows across health services,” Mr Silveira said.

DXC Care Suite, built on DXC Healthcare Cloud on Microsoft Azure, offers contemporary patient record management, automated scheduling and pathway management. It is also integrated with Adelaide-based PowerHealth Solutions’ PowerBilling & Revenue Collection (PBRC) solution, which will be part of the both the West Hume and Central Hume implementations.

Mr Silveira said cloud-based systems had obvious benefits.

“Care Suite provides a high level of security as well as the redundancy and ability to provide solid disaster recovery capability. The cloud is definitely one of the key elements that we strongly consider for any digital services solution.”

Daryll Goodall, DXC Healthcare director for Australia and New Zealand, said the roll out was one of the first enterprise hospital systems in Australia to be delivered on an as-a-service model. “[It will] result in no downtime upgrades and a level of security crucial to the safety of patient health information,” he said.

Mr Sharp said the implementation will also allow the West Hume Region to extend its digitisation strategy more broadly across the region, not just within the region.

“People move between our health services and it’s important that not only is their care transition moved seamlessly but also the information related to their care and treatment,” he said. “We want to make sure that moves seamlessly as well. Any clinician across the region has that opportunity to see what is happening with that particular patient at any given time.”

Mr Sharp said the implementation of DXC’s Care Suite in a rural area was a significant step. “The support received for this project is welcomed and shows that new patient information systems can be implemented in regional health services, and not only in metropolitan centres.”