24 April 2012

New Era of Health Care Welcomed

Sydney Local Health District has become the first in the state to launch a strategic plan which puts staff, patients and community members at the heart of decision-making, heralding a new and exciting era in health care delivery.

The plan contains a series of major plans to help set the organisation’s corporate and clinical agenda for the next five years, the Minister for Health and Minister for Medical Research, Jillian Skinner, said.

“When I became Minister, I established the Local Health Districts to specifically ensure local responsibility, local decision-making, greater transparency and accountability at a hospital level,” Minister Skinner said.

“Those districts were required to be more strategic and inclusive – of staff and the public – to ensure they were offering health services to best meet their community’s needs.

“As a result, I’m very pleased to be launching Sydney Local Health District’s strategic plan today because it reflects the NSW Government’s CORE values (collaboration, openness, respect and empowerment), and has successfully engaged the very people it serves,” she said.

Speaking at Canterbury Hospital today, Mrs Skinner said Sydney Local Health District had embraced health reform “as an exciting and unique opportunity to examine how it could ensure it continued to nurture and promote health and deliver world-class healthcare”.

“Believing that the organisation’s leading planning document needed to be considered and shaped by its major stakeholders – staff and members of the community – the district embarked upon an ambitious staff and community consultation process.

“Staff and community consultation forums, facilitated by independent consultants, were held across the four hospitals – Royal Prince Alfred, Canterbury, Concord and Balmain, and participants were invited to offer opinions on patient, staff, community, research, education and health services goals.

“The resulting strategies contained in the plan are relevant, robust and able to be understood by the district’s most important stakeholders - its staff and members of its community,” she said.

The plan is based on seven domains that reflect the district’s key concerns in delivering health service excellence:

• Our patients, consumers, carers;
• Our staff;
• Our community;
• Our services;
• Our education;
• Our research;
• Our organisation.

“For each of these domain areas, goals, feasible strategies and achievable timeframes have been identified,” Mrs Skinner said.

“The key purpose of the NSW public sector health system and Sydney Local Health District is to help people stay healthy and to provide access to timely, high quality, patient-centred health care.

“Achieving this requires clear priorities, supportive leadership and staff working together and I commend Sydney Local Health District for its leadership, commitment, focus and vision,” she said.