Thursday, 3 November 2022

Welcome to the November 2022 issue of the GP CALHN Link, which aims to help create and improve positive communication and engagement between CALHN and general practitioners.

In this edition you will find information about:

• How research at CALHN is tailoring treatments or offering new hope for those with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia, Type 1 Diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease
• Our rapid assessment clinic at Sefton Park - a great alternative to the emergency department
• COVID Care Centre – in a new location
• The new FiveQ questionnaire - fast, accurate and reliable tool to assess tinnitus severity

As always, if you have suggestions for articles you would find helpful in future or feedback on how we can improve this newsletter for GPs and practice staff - send us an email at Health.CALHNGPIntegrationUnit@sa.gov.au.

World-class research at the Royal Adelaide Hospital

Earlier this month we hosted our annual research event (RAHsearch) where several of our researchers and their patients shared their exciting research discoveries with the community.

The presentations were informative and if you have an interest in Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia, Type 1 Diabetes or bowel disease, we encourage you to watch the videos and share them with your patients.

To find out more, click on the videos below or visit our website.

Rapid assessment clinic – a great ED alternative 

Thanks to feedback received from GPs and other referrers, we have simplified the referral criteria for the Hospital Avoidance and Supported Discharge Service (HASDS). This will make it easier and quicker for adult patients to receive care – away from an emergency department.

In recent months, the HASDS clinic at Sefton Park has also expanded the multidisciplinary services it offers with patients now able to access allied health, radiology, specialised dressings, IV therapies and other services.

As a reminder, we are a referral-only – no patient self-referrals (walk-ins) can be accepted.

We look forward to your referrals and encourage you to pick up the phone to call our duty clinician to discuss your patient’s needs. 

Watch the video below to find out more about our service – we're here to help!

Opening hours

We’re open 7 days a week, weekdays from 8.30am – 8.30pm. Point of care testing, SA Pathology, on call radiology including non-contrast CT is available, with contrast CT soon to come. Access to allied health is currently only Monday to Friday.

To refer a patient

Simply call the HASDS duty clinician on 0435 475 190 before sending a patient to us. The duty phone number is for clinician only use and should not be given to patients.

Calling ahead allows us to confirm that the patient can be safely managed in our service and that we have capacity to accept them. Please see below for patient exceptions.

Once we’ve confirmed the patient, they can be given the address and transport organised to our service, usually by car, taxi or Uber but ambulance transfers can also be accepted directly. 

We are unable to see the following conditions or patients.

• Paediatric patients (aged less than 16 years) *
• Patients needing resuscitation and/or emergency management
• High Flow Oxygen requirements (02 >4L/min) *
• Persistently abnormal vital signs – PR >100, BP <100, RR>22*
• Non-traumatic chest pain or discomfort including throat, neck, left arm, epigastric, upper back *
• Undifferentiated acute abdominal pain (with concerns of peritonism, ruptured viscus, aortic aneurysm, intra-abdominal bleed, or bowel obstruction)
• Gastrointestinal bleed (melena and haematemesis) *
• Any alteration in central nervous system function (e.g., abnormal alteration in GCS, first time seizure, headache with red flags, etc.) *
• Complex fractures or dislocations likely requiring reduction or ORIF
• Patients that are injured because of a Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA), including pedestrians with injuries arising from an MVA
• C-spine tenderness or pain post trauma
• Pregnancy-related conditions
• Acute mental health deterioration or detained/ care and control or acute behavioural disturbance
• Highly complex mental health comorbidities (mild anxiety/depressive symptoms related to COVID/isolation accepted) *
• Patients affected by drugs and/or alcohol
• Pain requiring treatment with IV opioids prior to arrival at HASDS

* Please call to discuss specific patient referrals with medical officer if clinical complexities are identified or are outside the defined criteria.

COVID Care Centre (CCC) – now located at Sefton Park

A dedicated centre providing face-to-face care for COVID-19 positive patients in the community who don’t need emergency or inpatient care and are not expected to require overnight admission is now open at Sefton Park.

This referral-only centre provides:

• assessment and management of patients over the age of 16 years with COVID related clinical concerns
• and adult patients incidentally COVID positive with other unrelated clinical concerns, such as other illness, minor injury, or care coordination needs

Patients are able to access pathology, radiology, ECGs, and other CALHN services at this location.

Referring to the CCC

The CCC is able to provide care to:

• patients who are confirmed COVID-19 positive on PCR within 10 days of symptom onset (up to 14 days if remains symptomatic beyond 10 days)
• patients confirmed COVID 19- positive on a RAT and clinical features and history are consistent with COVID-19 within 14 days of symptom onset. Note: if patient has a positive RAT only, patient must wear goggles and mask

To refer a patient, contact the CAHLN CCC duty clinician on 0435 475 190. Information about referral exclusions is available from the CCC webpage.

No walk-ins will be accepted.

Music to the ears of people living with tinnitus

Developed by otolaryngologist Dr John-Charles Hodge and colleagues at the RAH, the questionnaire contains five simple questions relating to the key tinnitus symptom domains: sleep, mood, hearing, concentration and activities of daily living.

The FiveQ demonstrated acceptable internal validity and high-positive correlations with longer validated tinnitus quality of life questionnaires.

Read more about the FiveQ questionnaire and the underpinning research.

Catchment maps for LHNs

Are you unsure where to direct your referral because you don’t know where the boundaries of the three metropolitan catchments (NALHN, SALHN and CALHN) lie?

Check out these maps and bookmark them on your desktop so you can quickly determine the catchment in which your patient lives – they are interactive down to the middle of the street. 

Keep in mind that if the service doesn’t exist in the LHN in which your patient lives, they may need to be seen in another LHN – for example, NALHN has no plastics service, so in this case you would refer to CALHN. 

If you aren’t certain please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your friendly General Practice Integration Unit at Health.CALHNGPIntegrationUnit@sa.gov.au so we can help you get your referral to the right place. 

Research Pulse: a podcast by CALHN

Released monthly, our Research Pulse podcast gives you the opportunity to hear directly from leading researchers about how their work is contributing to world-class care. 

Our latest podcast features psychologist and researcher Taryn Lores from the Royal Adelaide Hospital, talks about integrating psychological care into in-hospital care for people living with inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD.

We learn about:

• inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
• how IBD affects mental health and vice versa
• the benefits to patient and the hospital of integrating psychological care into in-hospital care

Want to hear more about the world-class health research taking place across our network? Find us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you have feedback or a suggestion?

To provide feedback or suggestions for this newsletter please email Health.CALHNGPIntegrationUnit@sa.gov.au.

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