Derrimut DC team rallies in response to urgent call from Royal Melbourne Hospital

A Royal Melbourne Hospital trauma patient received treatment for severe burns without having to be transferred to another hospital, thanks to a quick response by HSV’s Derrimut distribution centre (DC) team.

Melbourne Health Clinical Product Advisor Pauline Whittle says she made a call to HSV’s Customer Operations team earlier this month when clinical staff ran out of dressings for a burns patient being treated at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) trauma centre.

Pauline says while RMH do stock dressings for burns patients, clinical staff had exhausted all their stock as well as additional stock that had been sourced from other health services.

“If we didn’t get additional supplies, the patient, who had suffered severe burns, would have had to be transferred to The Alfred. When a patient is severely injured, the last thing you want to do is move them.”

Pauline says within 10 minutes of her call to HSV’s DC team, the dressings she’d requested were being couriered to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Head of Distribution Centre Operations Josh Lotter says when the urgent call came in, the team reallocated resources to promptly pack the dressings for delivery.

“We get urgent calls on a regular basis, and we have a system in place to prioritise these requests so that we can provide the products health services need within the required timeframe.”

Pauline says it is good for health services to know that the HSV team is available and will work with them when they identify an urgent patient need.

“It’s important to acknowledge when someone does the vital job of listening to us and actioning our request,” she says.

As Josh noted, “We’re continuously improving our systems and training in this regard to make sure our service meets the expectations of health services. It’s great to see that our efforts to get the right product to the right place at the right time have been acknowledged.”