Quality
A culture of quality
We are committed to providing excellent holistic
care across our services, increasingly caring for people at various
stages of their lives.
We aspire to meet and exceed industry best practice. We evaluate
our success and inform our continuous improvement programs by
involving patients and clients, peak industry bodies, and community
and government representatives. We also participate in qualitative
and quantitative measures such as accreditation, quality and
clinical risk management, clinical audits, reviews and
benchmarking.
Quality and clinical risk management
Our quality and clinical risk management systems ensure patient
safety and quality outcomes and enable us to monitor and learn from
any adverse events.
Service accreditation
Each of our Australian hospitals is accredited by the
independent Australian Council on Healthcare
Standards under its Evaluation and Quality Improvement Program.
Accreditation surveys are on a rolling four year cycle, with a
major organisation wide survey every four years and a periodic
review ever two years.
During an organisation-wide survey, performance is reviewed
against 45 criteria, including 14 mandatory criteria in the
functional areas of clinical, corporate and support.
St John of God Halswell in New Zealand receives certification by
the Ministry of Health. In addition, it receives accreditation from
Quality Health New Zealand - the country's leading standards and
performance assessment agency for health and disability
services.
St John of God Pathology's laboratories are accredited via the
National Association of Testing Authorities, which conducts a s
similar program to the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards
over a three-year cycle. St John of God Pathology also receives
triennial accreditation under the National Corporate Quality
System, a standard applying to all Australian laboratories.
Doctor accreditation
The majority of our doctors - over 95% - are private visiting
specialists, who apply to our divisional Medical Advisory
Committees for accreditation to obtain clinical privileges to
provide medical, surgical, obstetric and other services to
patients. Our By Laws for Medical and Dental Practitioners govern
this process and detail the clinical responsibilities and rules of
conduct by which they abide. Many of our hospitals also employ a
medical practitioner in the role of Director of Medical
Services.
Satisfaction surveys
An important part of the continuous improvement and quality
programs for our hospitals are annual surveys of patient and doctor
satisfaction via the independent survey company, Press Ganey,
which benchmarks results against those of other participating
public and private health care groups. The surveys provide us with
specific information related to satisfaction, enabling us to
identify our strengths and opportunities to improve.
We also welcome feedback about any of our services at any
time.
Community & patient rights and responsibilities
We support and encourage patients in our hospitals to exercise
their rights and responsibilities as contained in our
Patient Charter
- Rights and Responsibilities.
Equally, we support and encourage patients in the community to
exercise their rights and responsibilities as contained in our
Community Charter, Rights and
Responsibilities.
Open communication
Open communication is a process of
communicating with patients who have suffered harm during the
delivery of health care. It is a national initiative and is now
mandated as part of our hospitals’ accreditation process. Timely
sharing of factual information, accompanied by an expression of
regret, is pivotal to the open communication process.