Central Queensland Health services and facilities have been praised as part of an independent assessment process assessing compliance across national healthcare standards.
Chief Executive Lisa Blackler is proud of a great result, following five days of short notice visits by 18 assessors to services and facilities across the Central Queensland region.
“These are experienced healthcare experts who assess us against standards we are required to meet to prove our services are high-quality and safe for our community,” she said.
“The assessors noted the confidence, pride and professionalism of our staff, the genuine care shown to patients, and the strong connections our teams have with the communities they serve.”
Highlights worth mentioning included:
- Delivery of complex and specialised care
- Well documented risks, and Quality Improvement initiatives
- Strong and genuine consumer partnerships
- Pride in teams and services; and
- A positive staff culture underpinned by strong clinical governance.
The assessors found the health service met all mandatory and high-risk recommendations.
Ms Blackler said the health service focused on an improvement environment, ensuring all staff always strive to provide the best possible care.
“While the assessors have noted that our health service largely meets required standards of healthcare, they also identified some improvement opportunities, and many of these we had already identified as areas to improve and had commenced bodies of work to address well before our notice of short notice accreditation.
“This includes strengthening clinical incident management; increasing timeliness of discharge summaries to GPs and community care providers and ensuring our aged care areas create a homelike therapeutic environment.
“This assessment week is a huge undertaking for staff across the health service, and I am extremely proud of the work done and evidence provided by our teams while continuing to provide great care to the community.”
Mandatory short notice assessments to the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards are completed at least once in a three-year accreditation cycle. Between cycles we continue to test our systems and process to ensure that we consistently meet and exceed the standards in an ever-changing healthcare environment.