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. Our Quality Improvement Committee Annual Report is available for public viewing.

Service accreditation

St John of God Hospital Geraldton 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.

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.

Satisfaction surveys

An important part of the continuous improvement and quality programs for our Hospital 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.