Page 1243 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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there has been pleasing progress. This was supported by most people interviewed and by early quantitative evidence. It was also noted that substantive cultural change takes time and that we are early in our journey of positive change. Mr Reid acknowledged the significant impact of both bushfires, through December 2019 and January 2020, and COVID-19 on the ACT public health system and, more broadly, on society. He noted that these factors had impacted the progression of some of the recommendations.
I will not go through all of Mr Reid’s findings; however, I will briefly touch on the key overarching messages. I am pleased to say that there was agreement and acknowledgement by nearly all of those who were interviewed that, given the relatively short period of time since the commencement of implementation, progress to date has been generally effective. The governance framework has been found to be soundly based and generally well enunciated. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity to further consider the role of the oversight group and other governance structures to improve their operation. The report proposes a review of the terms of reference of the oversight group and clearer articulation of the relationship between the oversight group and the clinical leadership forum, the ACT health and wellbeing partnership board and the non-government organisation leadership group.
I look forward to working with the oversight group, the other forums and the three arms of our public health system to consider these findings. Mr Reid’s assessment is that, on balance, there has been considerable progress in progressing the implementation of the recommendations. There were some minority views indicating some delay in progress and inconsistency in implementation of the recommendations that relate to the three arms of the ACT public health system. However, the overall view was that positive progress has occurred in the first year.
Mr Reid found that progress was particularly in evidence within each of the three health services on vision, values, altered workplace policies and human resource functions. However, some of the interagency and whole-of-system recommendations have not progressed at the same pace, and they will require increased focus over the next year. Mr Reid notes that significant cultural reform requires sustained effort over several years. He acknowledged that as this review has been undertaken relatively early in the cultural reform journey, substantial improvement at this time is unlikely. However, he reported that there were two areas across the three services that indicated early positive improvement. These are the focus areas on reported alleged clusters of poor culture and poor behaviour, and some quantitative evidence of health service improvement, as outlined in the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services results in their workplace culture surveys, both undertaken in November 2019.
Further, the report finds that virtually all members of the oversight group reported some evident improvement in overall culture, with less bullying and harassment across the three organisations, improved executive leadership of the leadership team, improved clinical engagement, and better human resource functions. Overall, Mr Reid has found that one year into the implementation of the final report’s recommendations is too short a time frame to expect significant improvement in the ACT’s public health services workplace culture. Notwithstanding this brief time frame, however, he also found that sustained focus on hotspots by the three service executives has been
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