AAA July-August 2020 Cover Story

JUL-AUG 20

australianageingagenda.com.au

Innovating through change Telstra Health is investing in aged care

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Innovating through

change As the expectations of seniors continue to rapidly evolve, it is more important than ever to incorporate digital health solutions to help meet the needs of residents and their families.

T

elstra Health, an Australian owned and operated software product and solutions vendor for health and aged care, has again innovated quickly to support its clients through challenging times.

Telstra Health has the largest clinical aged care software footprint in Australia, servicing providers who represent over 60,000 aged care beds. It has an array of cloud-based, modular, user experience-designed and integrated innovative technology solutions to suit a variety of aged care needs.

Message Manager is among its latest innovations. The messaging platform has been developed to enable providers to quickly and easily communicate with residents’ loved ones, says Michael Donnelly, head of aged and disability at Telstra Health.

“One of the things that has been important for our clients throughout the last few months is communication,” Donnelly tells Australian Ageing Agenda.

Message Manager is a communication tool that allows staff to email or text individuals, groups or all family contacts of residents in a facility through the software. It can be used to send personalised care updates, newsletters and information on events and illness outbreaks.

“It is just a simple, practical way of helping our residential aged care clients communicate

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Michael Donnelly

Mary Foley

with the families and loved ones of the residents in aged care,” says Donnelly.

He knew the platform, which launched in February, would benefit providers significantly, however its uptake picked up considerably when the COVID-19 health pandemic started to impact Australia.

The platform has become a vital means of communication between providers and residents’ loved ones about visiting restrictions and other changes related to COVID-19. It stores a record of all communications and has been designed for staff to easily track any COVID-related information that has been sent out, Donnelly says.

Another innovation is the Clinical and Care Management platform, which helps providers effectively manage clinical documentation, administration and care. Its most notable features include funding management and optimisation and state-of-the-art clinical tools, such as assessment forms, care plans, progress notes, alerts and charting functionality.

The software supports aged care providers to deliver individualised care that helps meet the preferences and goals of residents and families by sending staff alerts, overdue tasks and other critical information they can see and access via a compatible tablet, Donnelly says.

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Remaining agile

To keep apace with the sector’s demands, Telstra Health has moved quickly to adapt its solutions.

The current pandemic has changed the way providers approach technology, says Professor Mary Foley, managing director of Telstra Health.

“The circumstances around the response to COVID-19 have seen a substantial increase in interest in digital health and will inevitably lead to major changes to the way healthcare is delivered globally,” Foley tells AAA. “We are already seeing the rapid digitisation of components of the health system, with obvious benefits to providers, governments and patients from having access to accurate information in near real time.”

Telstra Health’s agile responses to the current aged care environment include the release of COVID-19 specific procedural forms to help improve workflow and care delivery, says Donnelly.

“We have recently launched a specific COVID-19 Assessment Form and suspected and confirmed infection labels to ensure providers had the tools in place to easily document any COVID-19 cases within their facilities,” he says.

Another product supporting providers to deliver high-quality care is Medication Management, which helps staff improve the quality management of medications and create efficiencies. It also connects with medication administration app MedMobile to allow staff to view and capture medication administration information at the point of care, Donnelly says.

There is also Resident Manager, which helps providers streamline Medicare events and simplify the admission and leave process, he says.

This product integrates with Clinical and Care Management to automatically create a record when a resident enters aged care, avoiding duplicate data entry.

All four products can be easily managed within a single residential solution, eliminating the need to work with multiple vendors for different products, Donnelly says. They support providers to achieve streamlined workflow processes, he says.

“It is about enabling care and nursing staff to simply and efficiently record what is happening and retrieve key information as they’re looking after their residents. It’s about reliability and ease of use.

“All of the complicated stuff is handled by our team.

“It’s enabling key information to be input simply, to be presented easily and for a full picture of a resident to be provided by that one system,” Donnelly says.

For providers offering residential and home aged care services, Telstra Health also has a digital platform strategy to connect solutions, he says.

Fast facts Telstra Health: n bought aged care software vendor iCareHealth in 2014 n r esidential aged care software operates across 60,000 of the approximate 200,000 beds in Australia n h as partnered with RMIT University and the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre to create a clinical decision support tool to detect deterioration among aged care residents n Resident Manager won a 2019 Victorian iAward n MedMobile

won in 2016 at Victorian iAwards, Microsoft Australia Partner Awards and at ITAC.

Australian focused

“The fact that we are Australian focused is important for people in this country.”

Looking at the health and care sectors more broadly, Telstra Health, through joint venture partner Fred IT, also supports Victoria’s prescription monitoring system SafeScript and supports community care and disability providers with Community Connect, a workforce and client management solution.

One of Telstra Health’s point of differences to many other software vendors is that it operates onshore and is dedicated to supporting the Australian market, says Donnelly.

“The fact that we are Australian focused is important for people in this country. If you are a software vendor who operates overseas, then they are your primary markets, whereas our clients have us, they are our primary market.”

Alongside its dedicated Australian operations, Telstra Health has a strong focus on internal culture and people development and is backed by Telstra as a parent company.

“We have not only the right values, the right intent and the right people, we also have the support to follow through on promises,” Donnelly says.

Going forward, Telstra Health’s focus will continue to be on meeting the needs of aged care providers, he says.

“More than half of residential aged care operators are struggling to break even. And they’re having to focus far more on their core business now and they’re looking to technology providers to provide continued investment,” Donnelly says.

“Our goals are to continue to invest in our software as the market changes and technology evolves and to continue to invest in a business based on servicing Australian clients, using the required capital investment backed by Telstra to create the best software platform possible and the best user experience we can.” n Contact Telstra Health W: www.telstrahealth.com E: aged.disability@health.telstra.com

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