2 April 2020

A Message to the PowerHealth Community

It has been a tough start to the year worldwide. PowerHealth understands these are extraordinary times and recognise we have an important part to play in supporting the critical services our health professionals are delivering.

We have instigated measures to ensure business continuity and employee safety. We recognise that throughout this time clients may have a need for additional support from PowerHealth. As a result, we are reorganising some internal priorities to ensure that we have the capacity to assist wherever we can, so please reach out if we can be of any assistance whatsoever.

The PowerHealth Team

PowerHealth News

In this time of uncertainty, we are continuing our commitment to our customers and projects and wanted to share some positive news stories.

New Risk & Management Platform - Mercy Hospital

We’re excited to share our latest product go live for the newest product in our suite, TPSC Cloud, with Mercy Hospital, a not for profit elective surgical hospital in Dunedin, New Zealand.

TPSC Cloud was selected as the tool to assist Mercy Hospital realise efficiency gains in the management of both incidents and risks. TPSC Cloud is a cloud-based quality and risk management platform that provides a framework for collecting and analysing safety and quality data with a view to implementing real world improvements that increase patient safety, which is a core focus for Mercy Hospital.

The move from a paper-based process to a cloud-based solution helps Mercy Hospital achieve their shared purpose of delivering exceptional care that makes a difference by; increasing the visibility of incidents/risks throughout the organisation, helping with the timely completion of incident investigations and risk reviews and improving the quality of data collected.

The team at Mercy Hospital was a pleasure to work with during the implementation and we look forward to continuing to work with them to help support their excellent safety culture through their use of TPSC Cloud.

For more information on TPSC Cloud please contact our patient safety Product/Business Manager, Paul Woodward.

Central Hume Partnership – Region Integration

PowerHealth is proud to announce we will be working with the Central Hume Partnership (CHP) to implement the PowerBilling and Revenue Collection (PBRC) solution. We will be partnering with the DXC Care Suite platform, to optimise workflow, minimise revenue leakage, and help improve outcomes in patient care across the partnership. We are buoyed that hospitals and regions are recognising that coordinated and efficient billing of health services is aligned to improving the patient journey.

The CHP is one of the regional health partnerships in the State of Victoria. Health partnerships provide a platform for initiating, implementing and/or overseeing collaborative efforts across health services in a region or area. This includes implementing State-wide policies and priorities, as well as locally led initiatives that respond to local issues or opportunities.

Sponsoring PPM Costing Program

We’re delighted to have provided an educational licence for PowerPerformance Manager (PPM) for the NEW Clinical Costing Fundamentals and Analyses Course being conducted at Melbourne Medical School within Melbourne University. It’s wonderful that an educational institution has recognised the importance of building the Clinical Costing skills within the healthcare community and we recognise the efforts of Ron Ma, Stephen Cole, Erica Cole and others to help instigate and develop this program.

The course is designed for Clinical Costers, Cost Analysts, Students, Nurses, Trainees and Allied Health Professionals with an interest in clinical costing.

We’ve committed to sponsoring a number of attendees and are delighted to announce our first two recipients, Dr David Liew and Cavan Lee Sears.

David is a Consultant Rheumatologist Clinical Pharmacologist and Project Lead, Medicines Optimisation Service at Austin Health. We loved reading David’s application and his desire to truly understand the whole costing and customer experience. - 'As a clinician, I’ve been hardwired to try and optimise the best possible outcomes for my patients in any given situation. It wasn’t always obvious to me, but as a medical system we are always trying to calculate a utilitarian outcome: the greatest overall good, whether it be within a patient, a ward, a clinic, or a system. In trying to understand the system which our patients exist in, it is no surprise that costing and value-based care affect our decisions every day, whether we acknowledge it or not. I have come to realise, that as a clinician and as a project lead, I need to formally engage with clinical costing to get the best outcomes for my projects and my patients, and a course like this offers a unique opportunity for someone like me to take a step towards better understanding’.

Cavan Lee Sears is the Senior Systems Analyst, Activity-Based Costing Team, at the Gold Coast University Hospital. We loved that Cavan recognised the need to understand ‘why’ and the important knowledge he would be able to share with his team - 'I would very much appreciate being awarded this scholarship as I believe that I would benefit greatly from this knowledge, not just myself, but my team would benefit from my knowing ‘why’ rather than just the ‘how’’.

Canada PPM Project Reaching Last Milestone

We’re delighted to share that PowerHealth’s Canadian PPM project concluded the provincial costing implementation six months early. We’re proud to have built a local team from scratch, who faced the challenge of a deployment in a new environment and language, and to have now completed this milestone half a year ahead of time.

PowerSanté’s members are continuing their hard work as they have launched the provincial Benchmark Portal, which allows comparability of cost results and various indicators amongst healthcare establishments, as well as a second iteration of the provincial Submission Framework (SSRC), which will feed the Ministry of Health’s database (SI-CPSS). It is expected that most healthcare establishments will have completed and submitted costing results for three financial years within four months.

The PHS team, also drove senior management and clinical engagement, which is well underway with more than 75% of the planned visits having been successfully completed. Furthermore, the Montreal team has been involved in delivering studies to lay the groundwork for normalisation and ABF on topics such as Community services, Ambulatory Classification Systems, Imagery Data Quality, Financial validation and normalisation, Annual Financial Report and Annual Statistical Report for automation and normalisation.

A big congratulations to our PowerSanté team.

Out and About

HFMA Queensland State Conference

Mahalo! Was the greeting heard many a time at the 2020 HFMA Australia Queensland State Conference in February which included a Luau Networking Dinner. PowerHealth’s Robert Lawson and Louise Deal enjoyed catching up with attendees and sharing information on our market leading billing and financial forecasting tools, PowerBilling and Revenue Collection (PBRC) and PowerBudgeting Forecasting and Modelling (PBFM). It was also wonderful to see the Hawaiian items purchased to support the firies

Supporting our Canadian partners in Winnipeg

As part of the PPM implementation at Health Science Centre (HSC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Mohamed Hasan, Costing Analyst from the Montreal office, participated in a two-day visit alongside our Canadian partner, Canadian Healthcare Management (CHM). The two-day forum was well received by the HSC team as they reviewed some of their costing results and where introduced to some of the benefits of the information they now have in PPM.

Mohamed Hasan presenting

Training, Training, Training!

The PowerSanté team hosted a PPM Quarterly training session in mid-February to support establishments with new team members. The participants covered the four core modules: GL Setup, Data Load, Costing Dataset and Reports. Clients from the entire province attended.

PowerSante also offered three data analysis training days in January so that Healthcare establishments can make better use of their costing data for performance or clinical improvement.

In early March, the Adelaide office hosted the PBRC SA/NT User group, which was a great informative session and provided a great opportunity for PBRC users to exchange their knowledge and learn from each other. We welcomed attendees from SAMI, SA Pathology, NT Health, NALHN and SALHN.

Data Analysis Training in Montreal

PBRC User Group Attendees - Donna Faucett (SA Pathology), Donnelle Bruin (SA Pathology), Toni Smith (NHLHN) and Alison Bandick (NT Health)

PowerHealth Values Awards

As a part of the roll out of our updated company values, we have introduced a ‘Value of the Month’ Award.

Each month we are focussing on a new Value and this month in the Adelaide office, it was ‘INTEGRITY’. Our Value of the Month winner was Lucas Jones, who received the award for demonstrating integrity when he referred two homeless men at our back gate to Street Connect.

For our Montreal office, the Value of the Month was “ONE TEAM”. The monthly activity promoted by the Values Working group was to give the 5 office teams coupons they would give to another team’s member for actions they considered supported the “ONE TEAM” value. The one catch: no coupon allowed to members of the same team. The winner of this activity was… the entire office!

Vanessa (Human Resources Manager) congratulates Lucas and the Canadian 'One Team' Winners' Cup with coupons

Employee Year Milestones

Congratulations to Phil Moore (Costing Manager), for 20 years and Brett Michael (Development Director), for 15 years with PowerHealth. We thank you both for your huge contribution to building PowerHealth, ongoing dedication to improving our business and dedication to our clients.

Patrick Power pictured with Brett (left image) and Phil (right image)

PowerHealth Community

Congratulations... Lindy from Western NSW LHD

Congratulations to Lindy S. from Western NSW LHD, who was the winner of our Haighs Competition in our last newsletter. We hope you love chocolate and enjoyed your prize.

Charities Supported in 2020

Both our Australian and Canadian offices have continued to raise money for charities each week by participating in casual Fridays.

This year, our Montreal office have so far supported Diabetes Québec, a non-profit association that has been supporting people with diabetes for over 60 years. Their second charity was further from home in support of the Australia bushfire victims, which was also a charity supported by the Adelaide office.

The Adelaide office also chose to donate to the Go Fund me account of Cooper, a young 12 year old boy going through the ordeal of needing to have an amputation. This is going to require lots of rehab and other costs that will add financial burden to his family, so the team were happy to make a contribution to help out.

PBRC Team Building Exercise

Our PBRC team recently participated in a group activity at Mega Adventure. It was a fantastic team building afternoon, with some great feedback received…

'It was a fun day outdoors, solving non-work-related problems with workmates. Mega Adventure as an activity was a daunting challenge at different levels, but once you give it ago, it was exhilarating!'

'Highly enjoyable. Good to move around and interact with everyone in a different environment'

Random Acts of Kindness Week

In February it is RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS week, so we decided to celebrate in our office by playing a little game called, KINDNESS TAG!

A TAG sheet was passed around the office. It was passed to a person to give an act of kindness to, this tags them, and they then got to repeat the kindness to tag someone else.

It created a bit of office fun – with no kind act too little or too large. Cups of tea and Caramello Koalas featured!

After all, the research says that being kind; helps ease anxious thoughts, is good for your heart, helps you live longer, reduces stress and prevents illness.

Our Montreal office had their own little act of kindness in February with PowerSanté’s Social Committee making Valentine’s day particularly sweet. Chocolates and lollies were distributed on everyone’s desk, making them start their day with a wonderful smile.

PowerHealth Social

Adelaide Fringe

The social team got into the Adelaide Fringe spirit in March organising tickets to Cirque Africa. It was certainly a 100% energy, vibrant and highly entertaining production. Michelle Musson, our very own David Musson’s wife, was invited on stage to participate as a member of a pretend musical ensemble. It was very entertaining, and she made our PowerHealth attendees proud.

Audience members invited onto stage

Michelle in action on stage!

Quite the balancing act