Group CEO's Report

It was a great privilege to be appointed as Group CEO in early June 2018. Ensuring the continuation of our Mission is my key responsibility as Group CEO and I am fortunate to be building on strong foundations developed under Dr Michael Stanford’s leadership.

Our overarching strategic priority is to be a recognised leader in the Australian health sector for the provision of high quality care. Patient safety and patient experience have been two areas of significant focus and in 2017-18 we implemented the Patient Safety Strategy and rolled out the Net Promoter Score and the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set in all acute hospitals. These two initiatives will help us to continue to provide enhanced patient‑centric services and will be tools that will assist us in meeting the call of our Mission to provide compassionate, person‑centred care.

Community Services, the arm of our organisation that delivers our social outreach and disability services, has continued to build on strong foundations to improve the lives of people in need. In 2017-18, we completed the integration of Marillac services with St John of God Accord and we now provide assistance to more than 1,000 clients throughout Victoria. We also expanded our Social Outreach work and increased services in the areas of perinatal and infant mental health, accommodation and support for at-risk young people, mental health, international health and disability.

The past year has seen the implementation of major recommendations arising from the Mission Management Model review, including new position descriptions for Mission leaders, the development of Leadership Formation pathways, improved reporting and the development of a revised formation policy to guide our efforts in the years ahead.

In 2017-18, we completed work on a number of capital projects, most notably St John of God Berwick Hospital, which opened in January this year and services the rapidly growing region of south-east Melbourne. St John of God Health Care has a significant presence in this region and a focus on ensuring we are well positioned to meet community need in the area. In addition to opening the new hospital at Berwick, we completed a substantial upgrade to St John of God Frankston Rehabilitation Hospital. We have also put in place a number of operational changes, including a restructure, to position us to align our services to community requirements in this region of Melbourne.

Technology and upgrading our investment in our digital capabilities was a big focus in 2017-18. Technology plays an increasing role in daily life and is a key enabler in healthcare. Significant progress was made in three key areas: establishing a more robust operating model; enterprise architecture and developing a digital strategy; and work programs addressing priorities identified by our hospitals and other services.

While as a not-for-profit financial performance is not our main goal, ensuring that we are using our resources in a fiscally responsible way that will allow our services to reach the greatest areas of need is one of the foundational requirements laid out in Our Vision. Careful cost management and sound financial stewardship have been a key area of focus and will continue to be so in the challenging environment in which we continue to operate.

Caring for our own people is part of our Mission and we have had a strong focus on Occupational Health and Safety over the past three years. I am delighted to report that in the 2017-18 financial year there was an improvement in safety performance of more than 47 per cent, an outstanding result. We will continue this focus and have a goal of zero harm at work as part of our Good to Great OHS strategy.

We are now moving into the last year of our five‑year planning cycle. As the 2015-2019 Strategic Priorities near an end, we have commenced planning for the future. While the strategy is still to be determined, we expect that clinical excellence, patient care and experience, and extending our models of care based on changing community needs will be our broad areas of focus, underpinned by a fit-for-purpose and lean support structure as well as appropriate technology.

I would like to end by thanking the Board and Trustees and the caregivers, specialist doctors, volunteers, donors and consumer representatives who make up St John of God Health Care, for their hard work in 2017-18. I look forward to continuing to provide outstanding care and support to the communities we serve in the coming twelve months and beyond.