St Vincent’s welcomes national model
St Vincent’s Health Australia is using the national model to empower staff to provide high-quality care during a period of change.
St Vincent’s Health Australia (St Vincent’s) is using the new National Model for Clinical Governance (national model) to help maintain consistently high-quality care through a significant period of change.
St Vincent’s National Chief Medical Officer, Dr Chris Robinson, said the organisation welcomed the national model’s intent − to shift the emphasis of clinical governance from compliance and form filling to creating an environment in which everyone works towards the common purpose of providing high-quality care.
With more than 30,000 team members, two public and 10 private hospitals in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, 25 residential aged care facilities, as well as a wide range of at-home and community-based services, St Vincent’s already has strong governance systems.
Dr Robinson said: ‘For us, the new national model is the perfect segue into how we move from a good, strong, robust but very traditional governance system into one that is a living, breathing, safe system.
‘It will help us to empower everyone at every level of governance to create a safe organisation for our residents, patients, consumers, and for all who walk into our facilities at any given time.’
Dr Chris Robinson,
St Vincent’s National Chief Medical Officer
Timely check-in
Aligning its clinical governance systems with the national model provides a timely way for St Vincent’s to check it has the foundations of good clinical governance in place as it prepares for the third edition of the NSQHS Standards, to be released in 2028, Dr Robinson said.
At the same time, St Vincent’s is transitioning to providing 50% of its services virtually or at home by 2030, one of the most significant innovations in the organisation’s 170-year history.
Dr Robinson said several principles in the national model align with the organisation’s priorities as it embarks on this period of change.
For example, the national model emphasises that data should be used in a meaningful way, aligning with St Vincent’s work towards introducing risk-based reporting – where the board is presented only with key data points of concern.
Dr Robinson also welcomed the national model’s focus on proactive identification and management of risk, and on the importance of a healthy workforce culture at a time when staff burnout is at an all-time high.
Reducing clipboard compliance
Kate Macdermid, St Vincent’s General Manager of Clinical Governance and Redesign, said implementing the national model should lead to less work for managers and the workforce.
‘The model promotes a shift away from clipboard compliance through to risk-orientated action. It means we’ll be doing less audits, and the audits we do will be more powerful and more impactful,’ Ms Macdermid said.
‘For our divisional management, including our Nursing Unit Managers, I think this is going to be absolutely a breath of fresh air.’
St Vincent’s will do a gap analysis against the national model and use this information to develop a structured plan for the next three years. It has also committed to aligning the clinical governance system of its new virtual care venture, St Vincent’s Care at Home, with the national model.
Dr Robinson said the strategic conversations taking place around the national model will help St Vincent’s provide consistently high-quality care into the future.
‘This is triggering conversations at every single level of the organisation. It does introduce more complexity, but it will also achieve more impact,’ he said.
‘The care we provide is safe today, but health care is changing at a pace that we’ve never seen before. The model’s clinical governance foundations will put us in a good position to be safe tomorrow, when care will look potentially very different to what it does today.’