NSW Health Pathology’s Liz Geddes was instrumental in pioneering the development of our award-winning COVID-19 Results Service that automatically delivers COVID-19 test results.

When the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic emerged, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy was thrust into an inter­na­tion­al health emer­gency of epic proportions.

Many of our incred­i­ble staff stepped up to meet the many chal­lenges being thrown our way, includ­ing Liz Ged­des, who led the devel­op­ment of an SMS ser­vice and call cen­tre to deliv­er results direct to patients. Both are a first for NSW Health Pathology.

And not just a few results, more than 7.8‑million and counting…

Liz’s out­stand­ing work earned her a final­ist posi­tion for NSW Health Awards Col­lab­o­ra­tive Staff Mem­ber of the Year in 2021.

These vital new ser­vices need­ed to meet two crit­i­cal challenges:

• How to deliv­er neg­a­tive test results faster than sev­en days or more and reduce anx­i­ety and unnec­es­sary home iso­la­tion, and
• Relieve lab­o­ra­to­ry staff and pub­lic hos­pi­tal staff from call­ing the up to 99 per cent of patients who had a neg­a­tive result.

This required hours of phone calls and divert­ed front­line health staff from their crit­i­cal  patient care roles.

The COVID-19 SMS Results Ser­vice and Call Cen­tre was devel­oped, pilot­ed and imple­ment­ed in two weeks, by a core team of tech­ni­cal, clin­i­cal and spe­cial­ist ICT experts – and led by Liz.

Stake­hold­ers across NSWHP, Min­istry of Health, local health dis­tricts, clin­i­cians, and patients also played an impor­tant role.

Launched in April 2020, the SMS Ser­vice has saved an esti­mat­ed 652,000 hours or the equiv­a­lent of 81,500 health work­er shifts.

Under Liz’s man­age­ment and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with part­ners, the ser­vice con­tin­ues to evolve.

Find out more here.

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