Waikato Hospital introduces ‘a completely new way of working’ with Alcidion’s Smartpage

About Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Waikato 

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Waikato serves over 425,000 people across 21,000 km², with around 8,900 healthcare professionals delivering care across five hospitals, two continuing care facilities, and a mental health inpatient unit. Waikato Hospital, located in Hamilton, is a key tertiary care provider for the region and beyond. Waikato Hospital has over 130 attendants at Waikato Hospital managing up to 1400+ tasks daily.  

Vision  

Healthy People. Excellent Care. 

Key Statistics 

• Area covered: 21,000km2 

• Population: 425,000+ 

• Healthcare staff: 8,900+ 

• Venues: Waikato Hospital in Hamilton, Thames Hospital, and three rural hospitals in Tokoroa, Te Kuiti, and Taumarunui 

• Beds: 680 Beds Acute Care Facility​ 

• Admissions: 14,000+ per year
• Emergency Department (ED) attendances: 85,000+ per year 

The Challenge: Task management system causing inefficiencies with patient and task flow 

Over the years, the complexity and volume of tasks for attendants have grown, yet the systems in place have not evolved to meet these demands. As the workload increased throughout the working day, the efficiency of the attendant pool diminished. One small analysis showed that an attendant was only actively working on a task 69% of the time – the remaining time was taken returning to a base or waiting for dispatcher instructions.   

Waikato attendants were seeking smarter ways to manage their attendant resources more efficiently. Compounding the issue, the legacy product had reached end-of-life and was no longer supported by the vendor, leaving the organisation without critical system updates or technical support. 

The Solution: Smartpage Non-Clinical helps Waikato Hospital’s attendants, cleaning demand management, tasking, reporting and monitoring   

Alcidion worked closely with Waikato Hospital to implement the Smartpage Non-Clinical solution, streamlining task management across the hospital’s departments. With Smartpage, attendants can now receive and send real-time notifications, and self-allocate or dispatcher-allocate as needed. ED, wards and clinics have complete visibility into task status and attendant assignment. 

(Image: Waikato CT staff using Smartpage to request patient scans from the wards.)

These capabilities are supported by an Android mobile app for attendant staff, and a real-time web interface for hospital departments requesting services. Waikato staff as a whole benefit from features such as group messaging, status updates and attendant location tracking. While the project initially focused on attendant tasking, the implementation later included Waikato’s outsourced cleaning services team of 180 cleaners using a pool of 20 phones.  

Deployment – Test System and Self-Dispatch Mode 

Using the legacy system as a starting point, the Alcidion project team was able to quickly build the existing framework of 350+ hospital locations and a myriad of task types into a test system for Smartpage. This was a crucial step, as Waikato Hospital has over 3,000+ users (including clinical and nursing staff) who were able to transition onto Smartpage smoothly from day one and with minimal additional training.  

Initially, training and deployment focused on the mobile app for attendants, using the dispatcher mode. This mode mirrors the legacy system, where a dispatcher allocates tasks to available attendants. Smartpage delivers a speedy two-click solution, which means dispatchers can quickly and easily allocate a task to an attendant within the new application.   

Waikato started controlled trials of Smartpage’s self-dispatch mode two weeks after going live. This feature enabled attendants to view and allocate tasks themselves and was quickly expanded to all attendants. The benefits were obvious. Often described as ‘Uber-for-attendants’, from the attendant’s perspective Smartpage represented an entirely new way of working. 

In September 2024, cleaning teams at the hospital also adopted the self-dispatch mode, which allowed them to meet heightened infection control requirements and more cleaning requests. 

Shakinder Prenash, ISS Cleaning Supervisor at the hospital commented, ‘Self dispatch has made our process paperless and smoother. I am able to get out on the floor and quality control the work of the cleaning team.’ 

Real-Time Web Interface and Other Features 

For hospital departments requesting services, a new real-time interface with Waikato’s existing Patient Administration System (iPM) allows patient information to be surfaced for use by Smartpage. For example, information on patient bed locations can now be included in task requests, allowing attendants to quickly find the right patients for transfers. This was well received as a big timesaver. 

While some attendants initially had reservations about the phone tracking feature, which provides visibility into the location of attendants, it is now widely appreciated for supporting better workflow visibility and collaboration. Shift coordinators can more easily track patient transfers and other tasks, ensuring better resource alignment. 

Waikato teams see additional benefit with the group messaging feature, which is now regularly used to inform (and sometimes get feedback from) the mobile workforce on any running issues around the hospital.  

The Result: Increased attendant productivity during peak hours by 15.2%. For cleaning services, released supervisor’s time managing additional cleaning requisitions. 

Since adopting Smartpage Non-Clinical, Waikato has experienced measurable improvements in productivity, task allocation, and operational visibility. During the peak winter surge, attendants handled an increased volume of tasks without the need for additional staffing, a shift credited to the efficient self-dispatch functionality. Waikato noted an average productivity increase of about 15.2% compared to their legacy systems.  

These benefits are felt throughout the hospital, allowing non-clinical teams to most effectively support the broader operation of Waikato.  

The Future  

Since the implementation, the 100+ android phones have seamlessly migrated to Microsoft’s Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution Intune.  The solution provides a secure and consistent look and feel for the shared pool phones. 

While the classic dispatcher mode required a large central attendant base within the hospital, the team now have the option to physically relocate to a much smaller room as the attendants are no longer tied to a base.  

Looking ahead, the organisation will look at using the system’s transfer nurse feature (Smartpage Transit Care functionality) already in use by other New Zealand hospitals. This solution uses a pool of nurses for high needs patient transfers instead of the busy ward nurse. A review of the attendant staffing levels will also reflect the changing tasking requirements.  

Learn more about Smartpage here.