About the project
This project aims to improve childhood asthma management in Melbourne’s north and west. We’re partnering with consumers and healthcare providers to
- Reduce emergency presentation across 4 hospitals:
- The Northern Hospital
- Royal Children's Hospital
- Sunshine Hospital
- Werribee Mercy
- Increase children and carers being involved in their care as much as they want to be
- Increase the utilisation of community asthma programs.
Objectives
- Reduce avoidable emergency department presentations & subsequent hospitalisation
- Improve adherence & clinician capability in managing asthma in accordance with best practice care
- Improve the ability for children and their carers to manage asthma at home
- Increase quality improvement capability in health service teams
- Establish effective partnerships between hospital, community, primary & virtual care in asthma management
- Inform ways to spread & scale towards a statewide paediatric asthma QI project
Background
Asthma is one the leading causes of paediatric hospital presentations in Victoria and remains a strong independent predictor of future hospitalisation despite many of these identified as potentially preventable.
Children living within Melbourne's north and west metropolitan region are disproportionately impacted by chronic conditions resulting in increased ED presentation rates related to asthma and/or wheeze.
How to get involved
To get in touch with a member of the team at Safer Care Victoria, please email icam@safercare.vic.gov.au.
Solution design
This initiative is using the demonstration collaborative design to build a greater degree of belief and evidence in the theory of change. This will be done across different health care settings within the north and west of Melbourne including acute hospitals, community asthma programs and virtual services.
The theory of change is built from the core key change concepts that evidence shows make the biggest impact on good asthma care for children- the “MAGIC”
- Medication provision
- Asthma action plan
- GP integration
- Inhaler and spacer technique
- Community asthma program
Project milestones
| Activity | Date |
|---|---|
| Learning session 1 | June 2024 |
| Action Period 1 | 1 July 2024 to November 2024 |
| Learning Session 2 | November 2024 |
| Action Period 2 – Participating sites identifying and testing different improvements related to one or all the MAGIC change concepts. | December 2024 to June 2025 |
| Learning Session 3 | June 2025 |
| Sustain phase – SCV reduce their support to the sites while collecting and analysing the data to see what improvements stick. | July-December 2025 |
| Summative event | November 2025 |
| Wrap-up, evaluation and transition | December 2025 |
Participating services
- Royal Children's Hospital
- The Northern Hospital
- Werribee Mercy
- Sunshine Hospital
- cohealth
- DPV
- Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED)
Priority area
This project supports our broader effort to reduce avoidable hospital admissions.