Page 3033 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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- An open disclosure policy and procedures that provide timely information to families and patients about significant adverse events. Evidence shows that families and patients may be more likely to enter into litigation when they feel health systems are not providing them with all the information about an incident.
- Incident management and reporting systems that log all incidents that occur, provide a systematic process for investigating them, and addressing issues that are identified and allow for accurate reporting to the ACT Insurance Agency of potential claims.
- An ongoing accreditation program exists that monitors compliance of systems and individual practice with a range of standards. This process will be further strengthened with the move from January 2013 to accreditation against the National Safety and Quality in Health Service Standards, endorsed by Health Ministers.
- An expanded program to support patient and family centred care will commence in the second half of 2012 and drive a program of work to improve the experience people have when using the Directorate’s Health Services. This builds on our ongoing program of capturing patient experiences and learning from these, our systematic approach to monitoring consumer feedback and our consumer satisfaction surveys, all of which provide us with information on how to improve our services and the community’s experience when using them.
This work is driven by our commitment to improving the safety and quality of our services and minimizing costs. The calculation of medical malpractice indemnity cover is complicated and is managed for the Territory by the ACT Insurance Authority.
(b) The ACT supports competitive tendering and procurement processes.
i) Pharmaceutical costs have been benchmarked at a national level with all major jurisdictions several times over the past 5 years the results have shown that the ACT procures this commodity group within average cost parameters and considering the buying power of the ACT compared to other larger states, confirms that these products are procured with a positive value for money outcome for the territory. The territory where appropriate and when value for money dictates utilises other jurisdiction’s contracts. Examples of these are a large proportion of the pharmaceutical and basic medical and surgical consumables are procured using the NSW suite of contracts or standing offers. This maximizes savings opportunities by piggy backing onto NSW’s superior buying power.
ii) The Directorate doesn’t set specific savings targets. It relies on competitive tendering and use of contracts referred to above.
(A copy of the attachment is available at the Chamber Support Office).
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