Touchstone Life Care

In great news for South Australia, ambulance ramping decreased by more than 40% during September. https://lnkd.in/gpNW9nyf This is off the back of large increases over the past two years and could be a response to the large number of new hospital beds recently built. But with the increasing ages and number of comorbidities of patients in our health system, we need to focus on better health systems not just bigger systems with more beds. Touchstone Life Care is one of many Australian owned and operated organisations taking a collaborative approach to creating a sustainable and person-centred health system that includes shared care across settings and shared patient centred data to support that. Read more about how we help reduce ambulance ramping and other blockages to good quality and efficient delivery of health and aged care.

Ambulance ramping cases have been described as the “canaries in the healthcare coalmine”, but digital advance care planning can help to alleviate the problem by preventing unnecessary hospitalisations and ensuring patients’ end-of-life care choices are respected, including wishes to not endure life-extending interventions or hospitalisations. In some instances, ambulances are “ramped” for hours outside hospitals, and the crisis is expected to continue as Australia’s population ages and multimorbidities rise. An editorial on ambulance ramping in The Lancet Healthy Longevity said that solutions do exist: “For example, in the Netherlands, greater investment in palliative care has led to more people being able to die at home or in specialist institutions than in hospital; a crucial metric, as hospital use is highest in the last year of life.” Founder and CEO of Touchstone Life Care Dr Merran Cooper said, “Digital advance care plans allow carers, paramedics, emergency department clinicians and loved ones to urgently access patients’ end-of-life preferences, even when they are unresponsive. “They lower the amount of unnecessary and unwanted hospital care that is provided to people who actually want to have a gentle death in a place they prefer.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/gCqtgkNn #digitalhealth #advancecaredirectives #digitaladvancecareplanning #agedcare #homecare #palliativecare #dementia #interoperability #healthtechnology

Touchstone welcomes the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s report recommending the Aged Care Bill be passed. As our CEO Dr Merran Cooper said in her evidence to the Committee, Touchstone's digital advance care planning platform supports the Aged Care Act's person-centered, human rights approach to the provision of aged care. Our solution: ⚫ places the person at the centre of their end-of-life care decisions, even when they are unable to speak for themselves ⚫ provides a sophisticated, intelligent solution to help people make better advance care plans that promote their wishes, are user friendly and intuitive, and suit their needs ⚫ enables medical teams to access their patients' advance care plans at points of need ⚫ offers open APIs, integrations with health and aged care systems, and SSO for privacy and security ⚫ helps providers decrease administrative burden, demonstrate compliance and save time ⚫ caters to home care as well as residential care providers ⚫ helps minimise suffering, conflict and trauma for individuals, their loved ones, and care providers. We will continue to work with providers in helping them to deliver the right care, in the right place, at the right time. Read the Senate Committee's report: https://lnkd.in/gKjxc7BY #agedcare #homecare #palliativecare #dementia #digitalhealth #interoperability

As a 24-year-old, our founder and CEO Dr Merran Cooper was with her husband Mark as he died peacefully in a hospital bed. Years later, she trained to be a medical doctor and saw that dying had become worse in our hospitals, not better. Advancements in technologies mean many options are available to extend life, but research shows medical decisions made on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves are frequently not what the patient would have chosen and often lead to suffering, conflict, and a lack of dignity. Merran will be presenting at the Australian Association of Gerontology Conference in Hobart next week about the lessons she has learned during six years of advocating for change while developing Touchstone's digital advance care planning platform, including: ⚫ how to codesign an intuitive tool that is easy to use for older people, yet comprehensive enough to convey information for difficult shared medical decision making ⚫ how to ensure privacy while also allowing advance care plans to be shared when they are urgently needed ⚫ how digital advance care plans integrate with health and aged care systems, and meet the needs of care providers throughout Australia's jurisdictions ⚫ how Touchstone enables a human rights approach to advance care planning, and ensures people can decide on and drive their own care. Merran's presentation at next week's AAG Conference: 👩⚕️ Introduction of a digital advance care planning platform into residential care settings – A change management approach 📅 Friday, November 15 ⏰ 12:15pm AAG Conference program: https://lnkd.in/guRi4bCZ #AAGConf24 #agedcare #homecare #palliativecare #dementia #digitalhealth #interoperability

Data matters. Touchstone's de-identified data provides a unique look into the end-of-life wishes of Australians. Insights from almost 700 of the most recent Touchstone digital advance care plans include: The age range spans from 15 to 109 years old, with a median age of 61.  🔺 The most important priorities for a minimum quality of life relate to:  ▫️ The ability to communicate.  ▫️ Some degree of independence.  ▫️ Family around me.  ▫️ Maintaining personal activities for meaning.    🔹 30.09% said life would not be worth living if they cannot see anything. 🔹 22.5% said life would not be worth living if they cannot talk to loved ones but can hear them and understand what they say. 🔹 10.2% said life would not be worth living if they have mild to moderate pain and medication isn't helping. 🔹 45% said life would not be worth living if they have severe pain and medication isn't helping. 🔹 15.5% said life would not be worth living if they can only sleep for a few hours every night and medications aren’t helping. 🔹 25.3% said life would not be worth living if they have persistent nausea and medication isn't helping. 🔹 49.4% said life would not be worth living if they cannot eat or swallow anything except sips of water. 🔹 22.8% said life would not be worth living if they have lost all control of their bladder. 🔹 35.8% said life would not be worth living if they have lost all control of their bowels.   🔹 37.9% said life would not be worth living if they are breathless for most of the day and medication is not helping. 🔹 28.6% said life would not be worth living if no-one is coming to visit them.   🔹 37.9% said life would not be worth living if their condition is impacting the lives of loved ones and they are distressed by it. 🔹 52.9% said life would not be worth living if they do not recognise their family or whereabouts. 🔺 For CPR after a catastrophic event such as stroke, major deterioration, illness or operation:  ▫️ 40.64% said they only want CPR if it is expected they will have their minimum quality of life ▫️ 49.12% said they do not want CPR ▫️ 10.24% said they do want to receive CPR regardless of quality of life. Gender of respondents is identified as: 64.7% female, 32.9% male, and 2.4% other. Data provides vital information to inform policy makers and care providers, ensuring the provision of necessary services and enabling them to plan for the future. It can also ensure the most appropriate, kindest care is available at deeply vulnerable times. Read more of Touchstone's data insights, including those relating to terminal conditions and palliative care here: https://lnkd.in/grqnD_WA #agedcare #homecare #agedcarereform #palliativecare #digitaltransformation #digitalhealth Australian Digital Health Agency Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW)

Reflections on an important panel to close out the ACCPA national conference, with a discussion on human rights, the rights of people within aged care, and the new Aged Care Act. "The challenge of whether this Act works or not will be whether it changes culture," Age Discrimination Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald AM said. "If this Act drives culture – which includes driving dignity, agency and the rights to retain relationships – then it will be successful." As Craig Gear OAM, CEO of the Older Persons Advocacy Network, said, "This is exciting. We can do this." More and more compliance and prescription does not address risk and culture, but a care system that is about rights and respect does. Other panellists included: Tim Humphries, CEO of Homestyle Aged Care Services Victor Harcourt, principal at Russell Kennedy Our CEO Dr Merran Cooper appeared before the Senate Inquiry into the new Aged Care Act and called for mandatory digital advance care planning in order to protect people's rights and prevent the concerning outcomes of current manual processes, including: inappropriate transfers to hospital emergency, intrusive medical interventions and life extending treatments, such as wrongful CPR and critical care delivery that does not align with a patient’s wishes. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gpqXYwZz #ACCPANC24 #AgeofExcellence #digitalhealth #agedcare #homecare #digitaladvancecareplanning #interoperability #digitaltransformation

George Margelis Great article and one which cannot be ignored for any service that prescribes or requires the use of primary care physicians. I would take it further- any comparison of what AI can deliver needs to be compared not only to the actual health services we are delivering but to the trend of what we are delivering- as we do with commodity futures. That means comparing likely service outcomes as GenAI increases rapidly in its capabilities and primary carers on the ground decrease rapidly in their numbers. These projections must be included in any government policies that rely on primary care workforces.

Come and visit Dr Merran Cooper and Lisa Thomson at booth 37 to see how Touchstone Life Care can work for your organisation. Touchstone provides an intuitive, shareable, secure, connected, kinder digital advance care planning platform to improve the experiences of people in end of life care.

Did you know 👉 Touchstone has been chosen to join Telstra Health’s Smart Marketplace, an ecosystem of health technologies that can seamlessly integrate with Telstra Health's software and solutions. Each Smart Marketplace partner has been handpicked for providing the highest standards in innovation, service and reliability. The Smart Marketplace is designed to offer a comprehensive suite of digital health tools for care providers to streamline every aspect of their operations, and includes easy onboarding, security and governance, and scalability. Why is Touchstone a vital addition to the Telstra Health Smart Marketplace ecosystem? Studies have shown that less than seven per cent of Australians have an up-to-date advance care plan. Where plans do exist, they are typically in paper form, unavailable in an emergency, or lack meaningful instructions for clinicians to act on. This often results in doctors prescribing end-of-life care that is not aligned with a patient’s wishes. It can also result in delayed or conflicted care. Touchstone’s platform reduces these risks, and provides a cloud-based digital advance care planning management system for every state and territory across Australia. Now Touchstone’s platform will be accessible as an integrated add-on available to health and aged care providers that already use Telstra Health software and solutions. We're on stand 37 at the ACCPA national conference this week – come on over for a demonstration to see how it works 👩⚕️ 🧑💻 Or book a Touchstone demo here: https://lnkd.in/gRT2y2kx #digitalhealth #agedcare #homecare #digitaltransformation #ACCPANC24 #AgeofExcellence

We are delighted to be at ACCPA 2024 in Adelaide this week. With the theme “Age of Excellence: Inspire, Innovate, Impact”, the national conference of the Aged & Community Care Providers Association captures the essence of Touchstone Life Care. We have created our intuitive, shareable, secure, connected, kinder digital advance care planning platform to improve the experiences of people in end-of-life care. We provide them with the peace of mind that comes from knowing their care choices and wishes will be heard by clinical staff and family members when they need to be. And with Touchstone, care providers can access the vital information that will help them to reduce trauma, lower staff stress, avoid family conflict, inform ambulance transfers, reduce hospital admissions, lower costs and meet their compliance obligations. Come and see us at stand 37, meet our founder and CEO Dr Merran Cooper, and see how Touchstone can work for you 👩⚕️ 🧑💻 Not in Adelaide? You can book a Touchstone demo here: https://lnkd.in/gRT2y2kx #ACCPANC24 #AgeofExcellence #digitalhealth #agedcare #homecare #digitaladvancecareplanning #interoperability #digitaltransformation