Home About us Policy Frameworks Clinical Governance, Safety and Quality Patient Alert Policy

Patient Alert Policy

Applicable to: This policy is applicable to Health Service Providers (HSPs) that provide publicly funded patient care.

Description: The Patient Alert Policy (the policy) mandates a standardised process for communicating patient alerts across the WA health system using the PAS (Patient Administration System), for example webPAS. A patient alert is a diagnosis which has the potential to be of critical importance to a patient’s management during their episode of care, especially during the first 24 hours, and assumes that the patient is not always capable of communicating such information.

The objective of this policy is to reduce the risk of patients experiencing an adverse reaction to a previously identified anaesthetic condition, medical condition, medication, or dietary-related risk by improving communication of these risks to treating clinicians.

This policy outlines the minimum requirements for the approval and documentation of patient alerts within patient medical records and the PAS throughout the WA health system, to ensure consistent, safe, and timely patient alert information is provided to clinicians.

Other forms of PAS alerts, such as Micro Alerts, patient and/or family member Behaviour (Risk) Alerts and MedicAlerts are outside the scope of this policy.

This policy is a mandatory requirement for Health Service Providers under the Clinical Governance, Safety and Quality Policy Framework pursuant to section 26(2)(c) of the Health Services Act 2016.

Date of effect: 14 June 2017