In 2015, the former South Australian Department for Health and Ageing appointed HOI to undertake a review of the Norwood procedure and staged surgical palliation for hypoplastic left heart syndrome (the Norwood procedure) under the Nationally Funded Centres (NFC) Program, which is delivered at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne and the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (Westmead). The Review objectives were to:
- Provide a comprehensive analysis of the delivery of the procedure and formulate specific recommendations in line with the Review’s objectives.
- Recommend a price for the delivery of each of the three stages of the procedure and improvements to the delivery of the procedure.
- Review the NFC Patient and Family Questionnaire and determine the value of the existing questionnaire not only to patients and their family and/or carers but also to NFC sites and referring clinicians.
- Assess opportunities for seeking ongoing feedback and views of referring clinicians regarding their experiences with the NFC process.
Key consultancy activities included: documentation and literature review; gap analysis of available data; development of a Review Framework; extensive stakeholder consultations; online surveys; case study site visits; costing and benchmarking analysis for two sites; Final Report including detailed analysis against the Review Framework. The Final Report and recommendations were delivered to the client and accepted.