Australia is a member of the assorted collection of countries with aging populations and an extreme shortage of doctor’s and nurses.
This is one of those places where mechanization could potentially save the day. Mostly, we see mechanization as a cost saving measure. McDonalds wants to offload some overhead so they install self-service devices to streamline customer service, and they get rid of front line staff.
But for most healthcare systems what’s needed is more of a time saving measure. Something to streamline the processes aligned with healthcare to make the lives of the vastly overworked healthcare heroes without capes easier. The system either needs more doctors (which it isn’t getting, because people are having fewer kids and med-school is expensive, yo!) or a system overhaul to provide more efficiencies and less waste, and that’s something that Vitalhub (VHI.V) understands all too well.
That’s what their subsidiary, The Oak Group, discovered when they completed a review of 1,000 medical, surgical and mental health patients throughout the health system and saw room for improvement, development and growth. After which, they signed a provincial deal with the Tasmanian Health service to bring more efficiency to the sector.
They discovered that there are approximately 94,000 hospital beds in the Australian market, across 1,330 hospitals. The Oak Group’s proprietary software is called Making Care Appropriate for Patients (MCAP). It’s a blockchain-enabled patient flow organizer.
Here’s what we wrote about it in an earlier article:
The MCAP Clinical Utilization Review software would change all that by revealing the reasons behind patient flow roadblocks, giving clinical teams the necessary data to make informed decisions to fix them.
By efficiently allocating resources, medical care professionals will be able to improve patient care and reduce inappropriate discharges.
Doctors and nurses don’t want to worry about where they’re going to find a bed for their next patient. MCAP clears up backlogs and roadblocks getting in the way of appropriate intake and discharge, freeing up beds and making the entire hospital stay process much more streamlined and efficient.
One of the major consequences of inadequate patient flow is the development of queues.
According to Analytics Magazine, there are three major causes of queues in hospitals:
- Idle capacity due to a failure to synchronize complementary resources. For example, making sure there’s an X-ray tech present on the day when a patient needs an X-ray.
- Inadequate communication to ensure downstream departments are prepared to receive patients from upstream departments and to ensure that all parties are prepared for foreseeable demand. For example: No patients left waiting in the hallway for hours because their rooms aren’t ready, because someone failed to inform housekeeping that the previous patient had been discharged.
- Inefficient processes that require more work than necessary or un-needed repetition of work. For example, nurses who spend time gathering together medication for their patients and then discover that the nurse they took over for has already given them their medication and failed to mark that on the chart.
And solving all this translates into more contracts and more money for Vitalhub.
“Our entry into the Australian market marks another meaningful milestone in our continued growth strategy, as we look to expand our presence in key, selected global markets. We not only have operations use of the Oak Group’s products in the UK and Qatar, but now in Australia as well,” said Dan Matlow, CEO of Vitalhub.
The company estimates a price of $200 to $250 per bed per year, creating a potential for roughly $18.8 million to $23.5 million for Vitalhub to address, providing patient flow solutions to the Australian market.
And that’s why VHI is the best kind of company: one with a product that solves a social issue and makes money doing it. Who doesn’t like that?
—Joseph Morton
Full disclosure: Vitalhub is an equity.guru marketing client.
