ANNUAL REPORT - Northern Health

CEO’s Report
Northern Health continues to demonstrate great flexibility
and responsiveness to the needs of the community we
serve. Our organisation is experiencing significant increases
and demand on our services and we continue to focus on
achieving our vision for a healthier northern community.
The previous two years have seen significant work
undertaken and completed in clinical services and capital
planning to prepare for and provide the most appropriate
health services to meet the growing needs of our
community. The outcomes from this have been rapidly
translated into strategic master planning with predicted
outcomes being 50% increase in services over the next five
years and 100% increase in services over the next 10 years.
In July, 2009, Northern Health implemented an organisation
wide restructure to more efficiently and effectively operate
across our five campuses and in December 2009, the 2009-
12 Strategic Plan was endorsed by the Minister for Health
and the Department of Health.
In addition to strategic clinical services planning, the
Redesigning Care program was established to deliver service
improvement and build health service capability. Some of
the significant projects completed within our Redesigning
Care program include:
• a major operational review of General Operating
Theatres which led to a number of recommendations
being implemented to improve overall management,
patient flow and reduce patients cancellations;
• the ‘Smooth Operations’ program which is designed
to enhance the surgical patient journey and has led
to reductions in non-elective patient postponements,
reductions in Length Of Stay and improved systems
for Pre-admission, elective admissions and unplanned
surgery;
• the ‘Redesigning the Non-admitted emergency patient
journey’ program which supported the establishment
of the Rapid Intervention and Treatment Zone (RITZ) in
the Emergency Department at The Northern Hospital.
This has resulted in improved access and care for nonadmitted
patients. Patients treated in the RITZ are now
seen in a more timely fashion reducing wait times for all
patients; and
• the ‘Improving the MAPU Experience’ project which
focused on improving ward level communication for the
Medical Assessment and Planning Unit at The Northern
Hospital. Staff now spend more time directly with
patients and supporting staff and the number of MAPU
patients discharged prior to a 48 hour Length Of Stay
has improved.
Many organisations, including health services, have faced
financial difficulty during recent years and Northern Health
has worked extremely hard and had the largest financial
turnaround of the 22 monitored health services in Victoria
during the 2009/10 financial year. Northern Health’s
performance improved from an operating deficit of $9.85m
in 2008/09 to only $1.14m in 2009/10.
This has been in conjunction with the achievement of the
majority of our clinical service targets. This is evidenced
by the improvement in the final quarter performance
monitoring score from 51 out of 100 for the last quarter
of 2008/09 to 83 out of 100 at the end of the 2009/10
financial year. Underpinning this financial recovery is the
three year Northern Health Financial Recovery Plan (2009-
2012). This plan details strategies to return Northern Health
to a financially viable Health Service and is linked to the
Strategic Plan.
Northern Health performed well against access targets,
particularly the success in surgery in 2009/10. The
recruitment of several highly skilled surgeons assists in
meeting demands and brings new innovative surgical
techniques to the community such as Enhanced Recovery
Programs (ERP) in colorectal surgery. The goal of the
Enhanced Recovery Program is to minimise the patient’s
stress response to surgery, reducing individual recovery times.
Length Of Stay is reduced with resultant cost savings and
increased bed availability allows more patients to be treated.
Notwithstanding this, the focus of ERP is always on the
benefits to the patient.
4 09/10 Northern Health Annual Report