Leading healthcare in Victoria
Epworth HealthCare is Victoria’s largest not-for-profit private hospital group. It has 11 sites, more than 1200 beds and 4000 staff, in Melbourne and Geelong.
IT powers hospitals
At Epworth, as in every hospital, IT plays an essential part in supporting clinicians and staff to do their jobs, and elevating the patient experience. Medical and administrative staff simply cannot work without technology – to access the Patient Admin System, for example, to print essential documents, to call colleagues, or to run a meeting over Teams. So Epworth uses a wealth of technologies including networks, PCs, tablets, laptops, workstations on wheels (WoWs), phones and printers – and just about every location in the hospital is a touchpoint for technology.
Keeping it all running smoothly is no small task, and it’s one that falls to Belinda Chambers, Epworth’s IT Service Delivery Manager.
‘My role is to make sure that our IT systems and devices are up and running to support staff and clinicians to do their jobs, and patients to have a positive experience of our facilities’, says Belinda. ‘My team provides day to day support through the IT Service Desk and on-site technicians, and we also provide the IT support for project work, such as the implementation of a new system.’
Challenging times
When Belinda came to the role in 2021, she inherited a few issues that she knew she must address: ‘We had a long term workforce that was undergoing quite a bit of natural attrition, especially after the pandemic, and a lot of valuable knowledge was going out of the door. The second issue was that by its nature, project work requires varying levels of resource, and I had to have a workforce with the flexibility to scale up and down. Thirdly, I had to get this all fixed whilst still maintaining the service and with no downtime. It was quite a challenge!’
IMI supporting the Epworth team
Epworth ‘put their toe in the water’ with IMI when their Geelong site needed a new onsite team member. The person that IMI supplied, and support of IMI’s management team were such a success that Belinda quickly saw that IMI could be the new way forward for Epworth’s IT Service Delivery approach. ‘Within three months of that first IMI person starting in Geelong’, says Belinda, ‘we were ramping up the team based on that initial great experience.’
Now Belinda consistently has three or four IMI people in the service desk team, plus at least one or two on projects most of the time. Other parts of Epworth’s IT division have seen Belinda’s results and have brought IMI resources into their teams too.
Positive results
Belinda couldn’t be happier with the IMI members of her team, who are fully integrated and indistinguishable from Epworth employees. ‘IMI have such beautiful customer service people that hospital staff have actually taken the time to get in touch with positive comments about my team. It takes a lot for someone to give unprompted feedback, so that’s a real tribute to IMI.’
IMI’s support has made a very tangible and practical difference to the way that Belinda is able to run her team and deliver service to Epworth staff and patients:
Relieving recruitment pressure – Belinda no longer has to spend large amounts of her time on recruitment. ‘IMI knows my requirements, our sites and how we work, so they find candidates who are the right fit. They do all the pre-selection and vetting, and I simply do the final interview.’
Resource management – IMI manage the performance of the people that they provide. ‘I manage their day to day work within the team’, says Belinda, ‘but overall performance is covered by IMI. If a team member wasn’t performing for any reason, I have the peace of mind of knowing that IMI will replace them.’
Flexibility – Belinda has access to staff from IMI as and when she needs them. ‘IMI has resources readily available, so I can flex my team up and down – for example for projects, or to backfill long-service leave, or sickness.’
The key to success
In summing up the reasons that the IMI engagement with Epworth has proved so successful, Belinda puts it down to three factors: ‘Firstly, the relationship with managers John and Vignesh. I know they are always on the end of a phone, and they are very responsive when I need support. Secondly, the quality of the candidates that IMI provides, and finally the weight off my mind when it comes to recruiting new resources. I know that IMI will provide what I need and that I can always trust them for high quality.’m, onsite or off, is great. We rarely have any issues, and if we do, we know that IMI will always sort it out”
