January 9, 2024Northern Health has released the 2022-23 Quality Account.
The Quality Account is developed to inform patients and community members about how quality and safety is monitored and improved throughout the health service. In the report, information about our services and the changes we have made to improve care and patient outcomes are highlighted, along with patient stories and data on important quality and safety indicators.
“Throughout this report, you will read about how Northern Health continues to meet, and exceed, many of the state and national health standards,” said Siva Sivarajah, Chief Executive.
“While it is important to measure our performance against healthcare targets, it is important to review all feedback we receive from our consumers, patients and their families. As a result of this feedback, we can continue to make improvements to the quality of our services.”
The report also highlights the many achievements of Northern Health during the 2022-23 financial year, including Northern Health becoming a designated mental health service and the third largest mental health provider in the state and the opening of a brand new state-of-the-art mental health facility. Other key milestones include our Australian first, Virtual Emergency Department becoming a state-wide service and renaming to the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED). Since its launch in October 2020, the VVED has seen 142,035 virtual presentations, and reduced unnecessary visits to the emergency department by 75 per cent.
Also highlighted in the report are the number of patients admitted to our emergency department (ED) at Northern Hospital Epping. More than 112000 patients were admitted to the ED in the 2022-23 financial year, making our ED the busiest in the state. More than 3,000 babies were born, just over 25,100 paediatric emergency presentations were admitted and over 254,000 Specialist Clinical appointments were attended,
The Quality Account also reported on our richly diverse patient community, with our patients born from over 195 countries and communicating in more than 115 languages. Our Transcultural and Language Services (TALS) and the Narrun Wilip-giin Aboriginal Support Unity collaboratively providing a combination of face-to-face and online cultural competence education sessions, cumulatively drawing an attendance of 1,245 individuals. TALS undertook 62 translations projects, effectively translating more than 257,000 words across our top 10 languages – Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Macedonian, Greek, Assyrian, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Punjabi and Persian.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff, patients, volunteers, consumers, and their families for their ongoing commitment to providing the very best care for our community,” Siva said.
We encourage all staff to read the 2022-23 Quality Account. Please click here the report.
