“This funding is a circuit breaker for our health system”

Rachael Page says there were “Whoop-Whoops! across the office” when they were confirmed as one of the recipients of the ACC Innovation Fund. 

The General Manager for HealthOne says the funding brought a huge sense of relief.

“ACC providers in Allied Health organisations have long been asking for access to the South Island shared electronic record – HealthOne,” she says. 

“This grant means we can finally progress the innovative integration work. We can finally begin to welcome allied health providers to the HealthOne community.” 

The fund was created to develop innovative programmes that will help New Zealanders recover from injury faster.  

The calibre of the submissions was so impressive, we increased our funding to support more initiatives that we initially planned for. Each recipient has been awarded $100,000 to support their innovative projects which will help improve outcomes for injured people,  

HealthOne is a secure electronic record. It allows a client's healthcare providers to quickly access information such as their test results, allergies, medications, GP summaries and hospital information.

This helps the medical professionals to make safer, faster, and better-informed decisions about the client’s care.

“Reducing the time spent seeking records and confirming clinical history equals more time spent on caring for the client,” says Rachael. “The right clinical information at hand means the most appropriate care and recovery plan can be determined more quickly.

“This funding is great validation.  We aimed to articulate just how important this development was, and ACC agreed. There were a few shouts and whoops in the office. We’re delighted.”

“The sector exceeded our expectations”

Megan Main is our Chief Executive. She says the goal for the Innovation Fund was to create an opportunity to reward and support innovation that will help people recover faster from injury.

“We know there are a huge number of innovative ideas out there that we could learn from and potentially help grow sustainably,” says Megan.  

“We asked for ideas that will help us accelerate our Health Sector Strategy, and the sector exceeded our expectations. We’re looking forward to working in partnership with all the recipients.”

Megan Main

Megan wants to thank the more than 100 health organisations that applied for the Innovation Fund. “We need to recognise the time and effort that went into each submission and their contribution towards making this fund a success,” she says.

The ideas we received covered a range of proposals, including programme delivery re-design/process changes, holistic rehabilitation programmes designed specifically for Māori and data integration platform proposals.

“A major impact across the system”

HealthOne collaborates across the system – they connect public, private and ACC providers.

“That collaborative environment has been pivotal in getting us to where we are today,” says Rachael. 

“But where there are new innovations that only affect one user group, it is extremely difficult to get the funding agreed.” So the $100,000 from ACC will prove to be a game changer.  

“We don’t have to go out to hundreds of ACC providers individually and ask for them to invest a little bit each," she says.  "We've been given one bulk amount by ACC and all ACC providers will benefit."

The impact of the Innovation Fund on HealthOne is substantial for ACC providers but also across the system.

“When a client goes to a GP or any other part of the South Island health system, the next clinician that looks after them can see what the ACC provider did with their injury and why.” 

Rachael says there are clear benefits for anybody who is looking after the client to know what their health records look like. There are financial benefits across the system as well.

If the clients' ACC provider can see the test results, observations and medications that the previous healthcare provider performed, then the need for another test is reduced.

The client will benefit because they don’t have to go and get another blood test. The expense across the system and to the ACC provider is reduced. Rachael recently attend the GP22 Conference. She was telling GPs the work her team at HealthOne is doing and she was approached by a numbers of GPs.

“They all said they were relieved that they would no longer get those calls from ACC providers asking for the client’s record,” she says.

“For a health system that is really under pressure, removing things like ‘can you send me a health record’ has a major impact across the system.”

Highly secure

Rachael says it’s important to note that HealthOne is highly secure. The client’s privacy is protected. “People can be well assured that anyone accessing their record is within their care team,” she says. 

This may be their GP, pharmacist, hospital staff or their ACC provider who is writing up their treatment and recovery plan. HealthOne actively monitors all accesses to a client’s record.

“If we see any access that don’t meet our criteria then we proactively chase those people and take appropriate action. If that has happened the client is informed.” 

Rachael says around 30,000 people have access to records across the health system. But only the people who are members of the client’s care team have access to their record.

“A great innovation”

Rachael says it’s brilliant to see ACC funding innovation in this way.

“I like that the type of investment you are doing is 100 percent focused on client treatment plans,” she says. “It’s also great that this is an investment across a diverse range of projects.” 

She says often when innovation funds are introduced, they are focused on IT innovation or developing a new tool. Whereas this fund meets a broad need across the health sector.

“I haven’t seen this anywhere else, so I commend ACC for that. It is very impressive. We are not usually eligible for this type of funding, so this makes a big difference.”

For more about the Innovation Fund visit the link below:

Innovation Fund