Auckland DHB improvement specialist, Paul Birch and the Auckland’s Starship Child Health Gastroenterology team recently received the “Health Excellence Award for Excellence in Community Health and Wellbeing”, for their transformation of the way the local healthcare system cares for children diagnosed with coeliac disease in Auckland.

Patients and clinicians can now make better use of their time at Starship’s Gastroenterology Service thanks to the development of a new Coeliac Disease in Children clinical pathway and clearer referral criteria published in the Auckland Region HealthPathways website.

Above: Award recipients - Dr Barnett Bond (Primary Care Director, Children’s Health), Helen Evans (Paediatric Gastroenterologist), Carl Sunderland (General Manager, Coeliac NZ), Dr Simon Chin (Paediatric Gastroenterologist) and Paul Birch (Project Manager).

Best use of time, all the time

With the development of new acceptance referral criteria and clinic audits, Auckland DHB improvement specialist, Paul Birch, and Service Clinical Director, Dr Helen Evans, found that more than 40 per cent of children referred into the service were being seen unnecessarily.

Together with Starship Children Health’s Director of Primary Care, Dr Barnett Bond, paediatric gastroenterologist, Dr Simon Chin, and other gastroenterologists, doctors and other clinicians across the northern region, they have now developed new referral criteria, pathways and processes for a range of conditions managed by the service.  

“By introducing these clearer pathways and processes we are seeing a much better use of everyone’s time,” says Paul. “Patients are waiting less and not having to make unnecessary visits to the service. Starship clinicians are now able to focus much more of their time on the more specialist cases, as they should be.”  

The work has created the opportunity to develop a new national intestinal failure service as well as beginning work on developing new clinical pathways for children’s endoscopies, coeliac disease, and inflammatory bowel disease.

Starship’s unique partnership with Coeliac NZ

The new regional clinical pathway for children with coeliac disease is the first to be developed. It’s led to a unique contractual partnership with Coeliac NZ (CNZ) to provide better access and support for the diagnosis and management of children with coeliac disease.  

It ensures more consistent care for everyone and better support in the community, with Starship as the diagnostic centre only and all future management in primary care by GPs, community dieticians and CNZ.  A new e-referral system and CNZ’s recent web upgrade ensures the very best and most up-to-date information reaches patients following diagnosis.  

As a minimum, Auckland region patients will now receive:

• Free membership with CNZ for the first 12 months following diagnosis
• A CNZ support pack designed in partnership with Starship’s gastroenterologists, dietitians and CNZ
• Allocation of a local CNZ-trained peer support person 24/7 telephone support
• Access to all CNZ events Referral to community dietitians across the region

The new partnership also provides free membership to GPs and paediatricians nationally as well as dietitians across the region.  

Dr Mike Shepherd, Children’s Service Director - Medical, says “The impressive results we’re seeing from this work demonstrates the commitment of Paul, Helen and the team to improve the service for the better. More streamlined and seamless processes make it better for our clinicians, our patients and their families, and that’s what it’s all about. We look forward to seeing more of this type of work in the future.”

Extract from NOVA magazine, Aug-Sept 2015 issue.