Dear colleagues,

There have been so many great and important messages today, so I will be brief.

A special thank you to everyone who is helping to keep our hospital and health service operating humming along. All of you play a role in preparing and managing Metro North during this time, so thank you.

As of 4pm today, Metro North had 109 confirmed cases. As the numbers in Queensland continue to rise, our ‘share’ will also rise. From today, I will include a daily tally at the end of my message for your information.

As we work through our last week of planning, and into ‘operations’ proper I’d like to highlight a few key things:

• Preparing for closure of school and childcare centres
• Working from home resources
• Commencement of Metro North Virtual Wards
• Changes to clinical services

Preparing for closure of schools and childcare centres

As you know there are ongoing discussions regarding the closure of schools and childcare centres. I understand that there is high-level consideration to retain education and care services for ‘essential services’ workers (including healthcare workers). We need to plan for all possibilities including full closures, including understanding how closures will impact our staff who are parents or guardians. To gain a better understanding of how these closures may impact you in your role, I am asking you to inform your manager of the potential impact ASAP and also by answering this online question. This will allow us to plan for continuing services.

Working from home resources

Putting people first includes our staff, not just our patients. We are currently maturing standardised guidelines and forms to allow for transparent decision making in relation to approving work from home arrangements. For those of you that have already been approved by your manager to work from home, we have established a COVID-19 HR Hotline Service. Staff can reach in via metronorthhr@health.qld.gov.au or by calling 3647 2819 from 8am – 5pm, Monday – Friday. There are a number of resources available on the COVID-19 webpage  to guide decision making and support services.  These will be matured during this week so that we can move to the new arrangements as soon as possible.  Please be mindful that not all positions are suitable for work from home, and Line Manager approvals will always be subject to operational requirements.

 Commencement of Metro North Virtual Wards

Up until now, our Virtual Ward service has been expertly managed by our inpatient teams at RBWH and TPCH.  These teams have done an outstanding job setting up these new services. It is now time for us to transition these services to a more enduring model and allow our inpatient teams to prepare for more acute, on-site inpatient work.

As such, today we opened our ‘first’ independent Virtual Ward Service! A big thank you to the leadership team who made this possible. The virtual wards will clinically operate from 8am – 9pm daily, supported by an on-call service. The wards will manage those patients that are COVID-19 positive and considered suitable for virtual management in their own home. These patients will be supported by expert clinicians, with access to “consult liaison services” and relevant referral pathways into supporting community and hospital services.  I look forward to sharing more information about these services in the short term.

Changes to clinical services

I’m incredibly impressed at how efficiently many of you have transition from businesses as usual to COVID-19 preparedness over the last few weeks. The work being done to ensure the security and conservation of PPE, the creation of clinical spaces and models of care for COVID-19 as well as the maintenance of essential BAU services is amazing. THANK YOU!!!

I ask for your co-operation and patience as we work to realign our services to meet the needs of Queenslanders at this most extra-ordinary time.

As always, I cannot stress enough the importance of good and regular hand washing, cough and sneeze etiquette, and social distancing (please see the pawfect example below – as modelled by my two canines).

Kind regards,

Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Health Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

*With effect 0800 24 March 2020