Accreditation under National Standards

Wimmera Health Care Group has accreditation under the new National Standards. Wimmea Health Care Group was assessed for accreditation between September 13 and 15, 2016. The 10 National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards include the following standards.

Standard 1: Governance for Safety and Quality in Health Service Organisations

       

Standard 2: Partnering with Consumers 

    

Standard 3: Preventing and Controlling Healthcare Associated Infections

 

Standard 4: Medication Safety

Standard 5: Patient Identification and Procedure Matching

Standard 6: Clinical Handover

Standard 7: Blood and Blood products

Standard 8: Preventing and Managing Pressure Injuries

Standard 9: Recognising and Responding to Clinical Deteroration in Acute Health Care

Standard 10: Preventing Falls and Harm from Falls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standard 2 of the National Standards focuses on partnering with consumers, which means collecting and acknowledging feedback from people who use the services provided. WHCG would like to provide consumers with relevent newsletter about partnering with consumers;

Standards 1 and 2 newsletter

Standards 3 and 4 newsletter

Standards 5 and 6 newsletter

Standards 7 and 8 newsletter

Standards 9 and 10 newsletter

Also of interest for consumers are the documents below:

Patient Centred Care Newsletter

Partnering with Consumers Newsletter

The Quality We Provide

Wimmera Health Care Group has developed a continuous quality improvement culture with the introduction of various strategies and initiatives to ensure that an effective quality control system is in place. The Board of Management, Chief Executive and staff of Wimmera Health Care Group are committed to the provision of quality health care for our customers.

Ensuring Quality

"Quality is consistently meeting the negotiated expectiation of our customers and optimising their health outcomes, in a safe and cost effective manner"

More importantly we try to EXCEED our customer's expectations.

Accreditation is a formal process to ensure that we deliver safe, high quality care based on standards and processes devised and developed by health care professionals for health care services. Wimmera Health Care Group has moved to accreditation under the National Standards.

The Wimmera Health Care Group has been continuously accredited by the ACHS since 1975 and as a result, our commitment to quality outcomes can clearly be demonstrated.

Wimmera Health Care Group is also accredited by two other external agencys:

  • The Aged Care Standards and Accrediation Agency LTD
  • The Australian Healthcare Associates (Home and Community Care).

Clinical Risk Management

Clinical risk management was introduced to Wimmera Health Care Group in 1989, and is one of the longest running programs in Australia. The model developed here has been quite revolutionary and aspects of the model have been adopted by other health care facilities both in Australia and Overseas. In 2001 a manual describing the Wimmera Clinical Risk Management Model was published.

Clinical risk management is about reducing the probability of adverse events happening to patients. The Wimmera Health Care Group has developed a unique model of clinical risk management that involves firstly detecting adverse events then analysing their risk severity and taking appropriate action to prevent their recurrence.

Rarely do adverse events result from the actions of an individual, they are the result of faults and weaknesses in the systems we use to deliver health care. As part of the clinical risk management program, information is actively sought from numerous sources about possible faults and weaknesses in our health care delivery systems so that action can be taken to strengthen our systems and prevent similar adverse events from occurring. Sources of information from within Wimmera Health Care Group include incident reports completed by staff, review of medical records and review of patient / family complaints. Examples of sources of information from outside Wimmera Health Care Group include newspaper and journal articles. When an adverse event occurs in another hospital, we ask ourselves “could this happen here”? If the answer is yes, we take action before an adverse event occurs.

The clinical pathway program commenced in February 2000, evolving as a result of clinical risk management issues and an Australian Council on Healthcare Standards recommendation. The purpose of the clinical pathway program is to improve the quality of patient care by developing and introducing evidence based, multi-disciplinary pathways for specific disease processes into the acute services of Wimmera Health Care Group; and to continuously monitor and analyse key process measures.