Digital Technology Service Desk

The Western Health Service Desk plays an integral role in the organisation and provides assistance for staff in all areas experiencing technological issues. This includes everything from connecting a printer to requesting access to EMR and much more.

Due to a number of important projects and other ongoing activities, Service Desk has experienced an increased call volume, averaging 12,000 phone calls per month, 400 per day, in recent times.

Much of this relates to the Active Directory project which still has about 8 weeks to run before we will finally clear that hurdle. It is acknowledged that much frustration has arisen from the many changes required as the project has progressed. It has been exceedingly complex and painful but absolutely necessary. Its successful conclusion will ensure WH is well placed in the future by having control over its communications environment.

While the Service Desk team work very hard to resolve queries quickly and effectively, the number of calls being received has left many staff experiencing long wait times to have their issues resolved.

Currently WH have 13 permanent service desk staff and we have added another 6 contractors to help us through this period. Due to the demand another 2 permanent employees are being added as well as another 2 contractors. A help desk team of 23 sounds like a large number but as per the numbers quoted above they each have to resolve 20 issues every day to keep up.

In order to help the Service Desk to provide better response times, we are requesting that staff only phone the Service Desk for urgent matters. Any non-urgent matters should be lodged with the Service Desk via email (servicedesk@wh.org.au) or through the Service Desk Portal (servicedesk.wh.org.au – available from inside and outside Western Health). It is left to staff discretion to decide if the matter is urgent.

By doing this we hope to maintain patient safety by ensuring that the most urgent requests are not waiting in a long queue. Apart from this process change the Service Desk team are recruiting additional staff as well as working on a number of other measures to improve response times.

On behalf of the Service Desk team I’d like to thank all staff for their cooperation in this matter.

Regards,

Mark Lawrence
Chief Financial Officer