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The Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Services Council is made up of a collective of Aboriginal and Community
controlled services that are scattered all over the Kimberley.
So that covers an area of about 440,000 square kilometres, so it certainly does provide some challenges
in terms of making sure that the communication between providers across sectors, between health
department and between the community control sector
with allied health services, employed through the GP division, with Perth, with the Kimberley
that all of that communication happens in a seamless way for patients to make sure that
we are really optimising patient care.
Just to give you an example, the renal GP who is located in Perth can be sitting in Perth, take a phone call from
a nurse or health worker up in Broome, or Kalumburu, or some far flung place.
Not infrequently we need to send people down to Perth for high-level care
and so there are enormous opportunities for duplication of material and errors as we found with the
medication records. So, moving all of that in to one seamless web-based system that can be shared
with the host of providers who are involved with that patient's care, not only when they're visiting but when they're back at their site
they can be looking at that record from a distance, with appropriate patient consent and
permission for them to be able to do that.
I come from Kalamburu, and I've been on dialysis eleven years now.
When we go to the big hospital here, we don't have kidney doctors. We've just got normal doctors
and it's sometimes pretty hard for us because we know what is going on and what is wrong with us
but the other doctors make phone call to the kidney doctors - to Doctor Waugh or Cherelle.
Let's use Albert as an example, he has a lot of input from various providers. He sees the local social worker, he sees the dentist, he sees the podiatrist, he sees the dietician
He sees me as his renal GP, he sees a specialist, he goes to Perth on occasion
for tests. Sometimes he gets sick and ends up in Broome Hospital.
We can all talk to the same record, and write notes in that, and we can all see what each other has done.
Which enables us to look after Albert better and increase his quality of care.
So for Albert, it's all just very simple in that he knows that we have this record and that we talk to each other
and so he can, he feels quite confident that we'll look after him to the best of our ability
and that we're all talkng to each other and we're all aware of what else is going on.
We have a high turn over of staff in the Kimberley as well. People don't know the patients neccessarily
if the patient doesn't volunteer that 'oh, I've just been somewhere and been admitted'
or 'I've just been somewhere and I got really sick and had this, needed this medicine'.
There's no way of knowing.
So we are very privileged here in the Kimberley because we have a system that's called MMX
be looking at the same record that Kununurra Hospital have, or Broome Hospital, or Kalumburu Clinic even
and it will spell out what the medications are, what was given, what was um, what changes were made
what a presenting problem was.
It's dramatically decreased medication errors, and we've actually formally assessed that - and have
evidence of a dramatic decrease in medication errors.
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I'll start from the beginning, with patient records I think it was really quite challenging when we first got the
electronic system, as we were thinking - oh how are we gonna do this? Cause we've got all, like, we've got 250
notes that we need to scan in to the system in order for the system to work.
Once we did that, and we started operating with the system we could see 'oh wow... everything's here
everything's from the cardiologist, you know, anything that we need from Broome we can ring them.
You can release the information and it comes straight away, if we're dealing with a doctor in
an emergency situation they've got their system up. Everyone can see the same picture.
The most beneficial thing is that we can then look immediately at their health care needs.
We've got current medication charts then, we don't have to go running around looking for medication orders
that are get, you know we'll fax them, and then you know the client's waiting there for two hours and we still
haven't got the facts.
We just go into the electronic system and it's there.
So, it's quicker and easier - for the whole Kimberley I think - yeah definitely work wise.
The only thing that lets us down is the speed of the internet - 'cause the information is there now.
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