Ready for Surgery Team (RfST) – Reimaging sustainable pathways

Healthcare services continue to face significant challenges to providing access to care and delivering care. Acceptance and utilisation of virtual options during the last three years has expanded as a result of the COVID pandemic. Conversely, waiting lists for surgical care have increased as a result of the pandemic. Leveraging these two competing factors, a multi-disciplinary team reimagined the surgical patient pathway to create efficiencies and improved access to care. Key stakeholder engagements across multiple business units were undertaken to inform each aspect of the implementation plan, including modifications to systems (iEMR, scheduling, booking), development of decision-making resources and frameworks, re-imaging workflows to maximise care value and virtual care opportunities, reviewing and reducing the physical footprint (through transition to virtual care touchpoints).