March 23, 2023
Queuing app trims emergency department workload
A Maori software company hopes the health reforms will help it get its award-winning triaging application into more of the country’s emergency departments.
Founder Morris Pita says seven of the 35 hospital emergency departments already use Emergency Q to assess patients on arrival to decide whether they should be admitted or directed to a primary care provider.
Last year it reduced the number of admissions to those seven departments by 32,000, giving staff more time to deal with those who really needed emergency care.
“We could triple that easily and take it to 100,000 less patients a year in our EDs once we find ourselves across the motu. Now we’re in an environment where we have Te Whatu Ora, where we have a single national funder and decision maker, it creates a real opportunity to leverage good home-grown ideas that are proven across the rest of country,” Mr Pita says.
He says hospitals using Emergency Q are seeing up to 15 percent reduction in ED volumes.