Page 1521 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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health services and drive design of future health infrastructure, improving consultation and engagement, and a strong and continuing focus on prevention.
Since becoming the Minister for Health and Wellbeing I have had the opportunity to: understand more fully the challenges and opportunities facing the delivery of public health services, meet with a wide range of stakeholders and staff, reflect on the performance and sustainability of ACT Health, and explore a range of health system models in operation around Australia.
As has been well explored over a number of years, the ACT has a healthy community and a high quality health system that offers a broader range of health services than cities of a comparable size. However, the ACT has consistently struggled to achieve a number of the national performance targets. Although we have been making faster performance gains than any other jurisdictions in recent years, we need considerable change at the top to improve these performances. The ACT government has consistently made significant investment in health services, and this will continue. But more investment simply is not enough. What we currently have is not working as well as it should. Our community deserves better.
We need lasting and sustainable improvements in the delivery of health services, the most complex services provided by government. We need truly territory-wide health service delivery, not health delivery based on facilities, as it has been for too long in the ACT. We need to design health facilities based on truly territory-wide health services planning. We need to attract and retain the right people and offer them opportunities over the course of their careers. We need better data to inform clinical decision-making, drive performance improvement and improve transparency and accountability. We must improve the quality of healthcare services and we must improve our performance across the range of indicators. And we must continue to find smarter ways to invest, not only in acute care services but also in effective prevention.
We need our system to work smarter and live within our means, and we need simpler, clearer and more accountable governance arrangements to drive system improvement. These are not challenges entirely unique to the ACT, and in outlining this complexity and some of the challenges it is not to shirk responsibility but to highlight that the challenges that can only be dealt with by a high-functioning organisation with strong governance in place. These are not challenges that can be overcome overnight, nor are they insurmountable. Indeed every day across Canberra the health of our community is cared for with skill, dedication and compassion by ACT Health staff.
Last week I attended staff forums at ACT Health and, at those forums, I shared with staff my belief that in recent times the governance arrangements of ACT Health have let staff down. The challenges of governance have been borne out by the recent feedback from the accreditation survey and confirmed a range of views I have received and views I have formed in my first year in the role.
It is the case that the government commenced strategic reform in ACT Health in 2015. But it is fair to say that, while some achievements have certainly been made, it has not delivered the outcomes that the government sought. That must change, and the
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