Victorian Minister for Health, Mary-Anne Thomas, has launched the Urgent Concern Helpline service, which will initially be trialed at select Victorian health services, beginning with Northern Health from early September.
Established by Safer Care Victoria (SCV) as part of the Safer Care for Kids initiative, it will be operated by the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED) and will provide an important escalation process for patients and their families when they have concerns about a patient’s condition deteriorating or feel their concerns are not being heard.
“It’s our responsibility to learn from every sentinel event to ensure it never happens again and that Victorians are receiving the best possible care,” said Minister Thomas.
“We’re making significant changes to the way our health services respond to patient deterioration because we know this has historically, and unacceptably, been a significant factor in paediatric sentinel events.”
“The new Urgent Concern Helpline will support families and patients and ensure they have somewhere to turn if they feel their concerns aren’t being heard.”
She said the escalation system is in response to feedback from families and will provide an additional point of contact for advocacy or support when local responses have been exhausted.
The helpline is part of acquitting a recommendation from the See Me, Hear Me Report that identified actions required to improve the care children receive.
The Government has committed to implementing all the recommendations made in the report to improve paediatric care.
At the centre of this reform is the families who have lost their child – and Safer Care for Kids is being co-designed with these parents and carers, as well as health services, to ensure the program’s success as it rolls out.
As part of this reform, Victoria last year also mandated the use of updated, standardised and age-specific Victorian Children’s Tool for Observation and Response (ViCTOR) charts whenever a child’s vital signs are recorded.
Work is also underway by SCV to develop a 24/7 virtual paediatric consultation and retrieval systems, in collaboration with the VVED, Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval, and the Victorian Paediatric Clinical Network.
