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Emergency Departments (EDs) across Metro South are celebrating a milestone ten years of person-centred emergency geriatric care, thanks to the CAREPACT (Comprehensive Aged Residents Emergency Partners in Assessment Care and Treatment) program.
Launched at PA Hospital in 2014, the-then Aged Care and Emergency (ACE) pilot program was developed by Emergency Physician Dr Ellen Burkett and CNC Dawn Bandiera. By 2016, the pilot evolved into the permanently funded CAREPACT service.
Today, the service is accessible to ~9,500 residential aged care facility (RACF) residents across Metro South, with a team of nearly 40 dedicated nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners and administrators working towards a single goal: to improve the quality and choice of care for RACF patients.
CAREPACT Clinical Lead and PAH Emergency Physician, Dr Terry Nash (pictured right) owes CAREPACT’s success to its innovative and comprehensive approach to geriatric emergency care.
“The Metro South region has the largest number of nursing homes and nursing home residents that we support. Dr Burkett identified an enormous opportunity to improve both the quality and choice of care for these patients, by aligning care to the patient’s life context, their stage of life, and their wishes for the style of care they receive,” he said.
“Rather than making the person adapt to the system, we instead adapt the system to the person, and that's the point of difference with CAREPACT.”
As the service closes in on its tenth anniversary, Dr Nash says CAREPACT’s demonstrable and significant benefits resonate at both sides of the health system.
“The biggest benefit is that patients have a choice about where they can get their emergency medicine care, and that it’s not just assumed that someone has to travel to an ED in order to have an acute care need met.
“Coming to ED can be an especially stressful experience for RACF patients, and that is often under-recognised. This approach improves the quality of care by taking away the chance of inducing delirium in people who have cognitive impairment, severe frailty, and/or severe multimorbidity. Giving RACF patients the opportunity to receive high-quality care in a familiar environment that aligns with their goals of care is an amazing thing to do.”
With over 15 years’ experience in emergency medicine and advanced training in palliative care, Dr Nash has seen countless patients through the ED journey and says he is proud to lead a service that meets the needs of vulnerable RACF residents.
“The highlight for me is hearing peoples’ stories and learning what’s important to them, what their careers were, and to start to understand their complex life experience. That breaks us out of the clinical spell where ED starts to feel like a series of pathologies and treatments and processes. It’s actually about people who are experiencing life, and we're a part of that story. Having our team focus on that has been a really big highlight.”
Cited for their commitment to delivering innovative, high-quality and patient-centred care to enhance the RACF patient experience and improve health outcomes, the CAREPACT team was shortlisted for the 2023 Metro South Health Partnering with Consumers Award.
Congratulations to the whole team on this fantastic achievement, and thank you for your ongoing commitment to improving health outcomes for RACF patients.