News

Southern Cross Healthcare has been recognised for its rollout of a new software system for managing patient and staff safety. 

The organisation’s switch to its SafeHub (RLDatix DCIQ) software at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic has won the Safer and Operationally Sustainable Organisation Award at the RLDatix People Summit in Melbourne. 

Haley Petkovich, National Quality and Risk Advisor at Southern Cross Healthcare, accepted the award on behalf of Southern Cross Healthcare and says she’s proud to see this recognition for the project.

“Our team worked really hard through extremely trying circumstances during the pandemic to transform Southern Cross Healthcare’s event management system across 16 hospitals in just six months,” she said.

SafeHub is software that every single employee and patient can add to, giving Southern Cross Healthcare great insights into employee and patient safety and operational performance. 

It also allows the organisation to take a more proactive approach to risk management, patient safety, and quality improvement.

Petkovich said Southern Cross Healthcare is the first organisation in New Zealand to implement RLDatix DCIQ, a cloud-based system and tackled the task at a time when team members couldn’t meet in person due to Covid restrictions.

“The business saw the benefit of having a comprehensive patient and staff safety software solution and wasn’t going to let the challenges of working remotely get in the way of that goal,” she said.

“This award is fantastic recognition of the work our team and the wider Southern Cross Healthcare group put in to make this commitment to safety in our hospitals, especially at a time when the wider health system was incredibly stretched due to Covid-19.”

Southern Cross Healthcare previously used a paper-based system to report events and manage risk and feedback, which Petkovich says made it difficult to anticipate and prevent safety problems.

“The old system could mean it was days or weeks before our teams found out something significant had happened,” she said.

“SafeHub means we can get our hospitals to a better place in terms of risk management and reporting. 

“As well as being quicker for our staff to use, it also offers better visibility in what’s happening across the network, which improves safety across our business as a whole.”