Client: Mater Health Services Brisbane, in conjunction with Queensland's Department of Health (QH), Children’s Health Queensland HHS (CHQ) and eHealth Queensland (eHQ).
Timeframe: 2013-2015
Background and Need
The State Government of Queensland determined that a new tertiary paediatric hospital would be established in Brisbane and that this would replace the two existing paediatric hospitals, viz. the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) and the Mater Children’s Hospital (MCH).
This was a massive undertaking that required establishing a new hospital from the merger of the two others and their closures. This entailed the integration of clinical services, workforce, management, equipment, etc., as well as the transition of necessary clinical and administrative information and technologies, so that QCH could open and operate on-time, safely and effectively.
Description of Service
Mater engaged Jeff Parker to program manage all the Information and ICT Transition requirements related to the closure of the MCH and the transfer of its public paediatric health services and staff to the new QCH, which opened successfully in November 2014. Consistent with the overall agreement for the MCH transition to QCH, Queensland Health funded Jeff’s position along with all other resources and associated costs incurred by Mater in the program. The role entailed:
- Designing and implementing a system for managing the projects that Mater undertook. There were over 30 discrete projects delivered covering areas such as data migration, data access, technology integration, and health record provision, with the majority requiring solution design and development.
- The application of knowledge related to privacy and other legislative constraints, legal conditions, policies, information management, and other related specialised areas to develop workable approaches to information sharing.
- The establishment of contractual instruments, including working with lawyers, to define agreement between the parties in areas such as privacy breaches, adverse events and liabilities.
- Managing a complex and at times difficult set of stakeholders across three organisations.
- Management of assigned Mater staff to the Transition project (Technical Architect and Business Analyst) and staff in other areas of Mater delivering the projects from the Work Packages.
- Project administration, including reporting, invoicing and financial management.
- Program and project management, including resource planning and recruitment, and risk and issue management.
- The design and establishment of effective governance arrangements, both between the stakeholders and within Mater, and at the ICT level and business level.
- Establishing and confirming requirements, solution architecture, design and implementation plans for all projects delivered as part of the program.
- Being a core member in the Day of Move Control Centre at Mater, coordinating all related IT in support of approx. 50 patients safely transferred.
Outcomes
- The QCH opened as scheduled and all data and systems delivered by Mater to enable QCH clinicians to access historical information for patients who were previously at MCH were operational and performed as intended. Mater supplied support services and training that were also successfully provided.
- Those solutions that provide ongoing services, e.g. portal access and health record provision for scanning at QCH, continue to operate and provide value to QCH and other Queensland Health clinicians.
This program laid the foundation for a subsequent program run collaboratively between the same parties, called the QH-Mater Information Sharing Program (see link below), which Jeff led the creation of and was appointed as Program Director, and Anthony O'Neill as Lead Solutions Architect.