Grampians Health geriatricians improving outcomes in Horsham and Stawell
17 September 2024
Regular visits from Grampians Health geriatric doctors are helping to improve health outcomes for patients in Stawell and Horsham acute settings.
The specialist doctors have been providing the service for a few months and it is expected to expand even further over time. Stawell campus acute nurse unit manager Amy Yole said the service was a great example of how Grampians Health was expanding services to its regional campuses.
“The geriatricians visit every Tuesday to do a ward round with the hospital medical officer and they review the inpatients that are suitable to be seen by them,” Ms Yole said.
“In the past we would have waited months for this kind of service at Stawell. It used to be on a referral system that we would refer through and then it would be outsourced.
“For us this new service has meant better outcomes for all our patients in that category because they are receiving timely care.
“It also supports our HMO team with decision making and diagnostics and that higher level of skilled assessment and medical intervention.
Ms Yole said as the title suggested, the service was for older patients.
“But that’s not always a strict criteria because sometimes we get patients a bit younger that might have early onset dementia or more complex issues so they definitely don’t exclude anyone,” she said.
“They might be just someone who has limited ability to care for themselves at home.
“The geriatricians will often think of things that we might not have for a particular patient. This support has just enabled us to get on top of things more quickly than we would have in the past.
“They can also help give that reassurance to families if needed and help with the more complex cases that might have been delayed prior to us having this service.”
Three Grampians Health geriatricians work on a roster system and a geriatrician registrar visits Stawell and Horsham every week, treating patients with capacity difficulties or cognitive decline.
Ms Yole said this service had been a huge win for the Stawell and Horsham campuses.
“The ability to get someone seen within a week rather than a month or longer is easily our biggest win,” she said.
“Our HMOs are learning from the geriatricians because they have this wealth of knowledge and they are supporting them. They are able to have a real complex ward round with these highly skilled clinicians and that is helping them learn as well.
“The other thing is that by having the geriatricians come up here and learning what Stawell can manage, they can make a firm assessment on which hospital campus is the best for each individual patient.
“So, in that way they’ve been able to prevent premature transfers or be able to facilitate transfers earlier than they would have been. It’s kind of like having a set of eyes at each campus with that collaborative approach helping to keep people closer to home sooner.
“A lot of our geriatrician reviews in the past would have been by Telehealth and we don’t have to do that anymore which is also a better outcome.
“Having three sets of medical eyes on a patient as opposed to one set is always a good thing and they also look at their medications in depth and work out how we can best treat the patients.”
Grampians Health Chief Operating Officer Ben Kelly said the geriatrician visits were a perfect example of how Grampians Health is delivering specialist care closer to home and increasing services to the Grampians region.
“Specialist support such as the services of geriatricians have been sadly lacking in smaller regional centres,” Mr Kelly said.
“Care closer to home is obviously a key goal for our communities and therefore for our clinical services. The desire to invest in service development opportunities by our clinicians in Stawell and Horsham is a great credit to them.”
A geriatrician is a doctor who specialises in caring for older people. They are experts in diagnosing and treating the many health issues that older adults might have. Just like kids have a paediatrician, older adults can see a geriatrician.