Providing healthcare excellence
The Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital is the first hospital in New South Wales (NSW) which is built, maintained and operated by the private sector under a 28 year Public Private Partnership (P3) arrangement between the NSW Government and private sector consortium partner Novacare, a special purpose company for the Calvary Mater Hospital P3 contract. Novacare comprises four companies; Westpac Banking, as equity investor and financier, Abigroup, the design and construction contractor, Honeywell the hard and Medirest, the soft facilities management contractors.
This project is a major undertaking and has been delivered in three phases involving the construction of new hospital buildings, refurbishment of the existing building and transfer of local mental health services onto the site.
The result is a wonderful achievement. The hospital has now increased its occupancy from 196 to 300 beds, has 3 new operating theatres, a day surgery unit and new Intensive Care and Coronary Care Units. With the addition of a new chemotherapy suite, it has also become the largest provider of radiation oncology services in NSW. The Department of Health has estimated that the cancer therapy and mental health facilities have become available several years earlier than would have been possible had the traditional public sector funding approach been taken.
Integrated facility management for soft services
Medirest is responsible for managing the diverse soft services element of the contract. It includes catering, cleaning, security, linen services, waste management, materials management, retail management and function catering and the provision of general management services.
Help desk capability
Medirest’s help desk team of five staff is also responsible for running the facility help desk for the campus which is the cornerstone to Medirest’s and Novacare’s support services. They use the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), QFM, from Service Works Global. In 2009, in excess of 20,000 hard and soft service calls were logged by Medirest on QFM; from the usual hospital spillages and asset related issues through to confirmation of patient meal numbers for the day, dietary changes and bed making requirements.
John Richardson, General Services Manager for Medirest explains, “QFM is a sophisticated application and we use it to manage the entire Calvary Mater Hospital P3 contract. It is crucial that the performance is tightly monitored and managed. QFM is a completely integrated application, so if there was to be a performance failure, then the system will automatically flag it and calculate the abatement, because the application integrates measurement into daily maintenance operations.”
Transparency and Accountability
There are 870 KPIs that Medirest needs to meet at the hospital across two services, all of which are managed by QFM. The KPIs range from a minor event failure (for example, not emptying a rubbish bag) through to complete loss of functionality. The services that Medirest provides at Calvary Mater Hospital are linked to complex performance based payments and there are a range of performance deductions which are based on functionality and the weighting of an area.
John Richardson illustrates, “For example, the operating theatres have a much higher weighting for functionality than office space. Deductions are calculated on the number of periods that something or somewhere is out of use; it ratchets up and there’s not a break until it’s rectified, therefore providing continuity, safe service and high standards within the facility, as well as ensuring patient, client, customer and employee satisfaction and providing the highest level of confidence to all users.”
Depth and breadth of technology experience
Service Works Global has extensive experience in the P3 market sector and its QFM software manages in
excess of 120 P3 contracts worldwide. It customizes each payment mechanism solution to meet the
performance demands of individual contracts and the application automates the calculation of any unitary charge that may be due.
“Both Medirest and the client have a high level of confidence in QFM,” comments John Richardson. “The client was proactively involved in developing and testing the customized payment mechanism solution with Service Works Global, including entering data to build the initial database and testing formulas, so they feel that they were part of building the system and have therefore bought into it because they were part of the process,” he says.
“The greatest challenge is the calculation of the performance deduction and it’s not one that’s
easy to do manually. QFM has made a very difficult task much more user friendly and makes the complex
payment deduction calculations within the contract appear very straightforward and transparent. ”
Flexibility
If required, QFM can provide flexibility if a time extension is required for a particular task. For example with hard services, if the service provider goes to fix something and identifies that the original event is related to another problem that they identify, then they may need a time extension for full rectification. The project director or designate for the hospital can see these events in QFM and also has the final sign off for extensions, which, as John Richardson explains, “keeps the integrity behind the function.”
The Hub
The help desk provided by Medirest has been very successful and as a result the services and standards at
the hospital are well maintained. There is one help desk phone number across the campus and the help desk is easy to access by phone, email or fax, 24/7. “QFM ensures that events are dealt with in a timely fashion,” says John Richardson, “and the success is largely due to the help desk and the way in which QFM co-ordinates the functions.”
The help desk service at Newcastle also provides an offsite service for a defence contract. “QFM enables us to manage more than one site from the help desk,” explains John Richardson.
“It provides a scalable solution that has the capability to provide multi-site, multi-service functionality. If you have regular callers, QFM software can self-populate all the relevant information about them,” he says, “which makes it possible to track how often people call and any particular service trends. This is an excellent facility for tracking important callers. Using QFM’s reporting tools it is possible to view the top 10 callers and how often they call so that genuine concerns can be addressed in a timely manner.”
There are 270 reports that Medirest can use in QFM, and Medirest uses them regularly for monthly reporting and to extract statistical information for annual reports. They run reports on a variety of criteria such as bed making, meal numbers and response and rectification times so they are confident that they have responded and rectified 95% of tasks within 24 hours
“QFM enables us to slice and dice the information in a number of ways which ensures that we tightly control and manage the various elements of customer service,” comments John Richardson. “Because all the jobs in the Calvary Mater Hospital contract are time-lined with clear rectification times managed by QFM, we are able to provide an excellent service which has a positive outcome for staff and patients,” he says. “It ensures they have a level of comfort that work is going to be responded to and completed in a timely manner. We are committed to achieving operational excellence through delivering the highest level of services, aligned with Calvary Mater Hospital’s operating practices, to ensure the ongoing success of the contract.”
