Quality & Safety

Heywood Rural Health (HRH) is committed to providing the community with safe, high quality care and services.  At HRH we want every person to feel welcome, valued, and safe when they are in our care.

Our aim is to provide care and services that are:

• Personal – Being aware of and meeting your needs and preferences.
• Safe – Keeping you safe – physically, culturally & emotionally.
• Effective  – Making sure you get the right care in the right way, and
• Connected – Connecting you with care & services to support your health & well-being

Improvements

We are always looking at different ways we can improve the care and services to you as a member of our community and that means partnering with you so that you can contribute to identifying what needs to be improved and how we should do this.

Feedback that you provide us with is also a key to improving care and services at HRH. Your lived experience offers great value in terms of what we do well and what we need to change so that positive outcomes are experienced for every person, every time.

Checking on how we are going

HRH undertakes internal and external reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of our systems and processes. Like all other health services, we closely monitor our performance on a wide range of quality and safety indicators, such as the number of clinical incidents that occur in our service (for example falls, pressure injury or medication errors). By doing this we ensure actions are taken to prevent/minimise further recurrence of adverse events and incidents that can cause harm.

Communication

HRH informs and advises consumers and communities of how we ensure quality and safety and through the annual Quality Account publication.

Risk Management

Risk assessment and management is an important aspect of our quality and safety program. Risks identified are rated in terms of their level of seriousness and likelihood to cause harm or have a negative impact on the consumers overall health and well-being. Once risks have been identified, actions are taken eliminate the risk of reduce its likely impact.

Accreditation

At HRH our performance is also monitored by external agencies against the following quality and safety standards:

• National  Safety and Quality Health Service Standards
• Aged Care Quality Standards
• Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited (AGPAL) standards

Compliance with these standards provides assurance and confidence to our patients, residents, clients and members of the community that HRH delivers quality and safe care.

Consumer, Carer and Community Participation

At HRH we want consumers (patients, residents and clients) to be actively involved in decision making about their health and healthcare .At the heart of this, is the free flow of information to and from the consumer.

At HRH we understand and respect the unique needs and preferences of each person and strive to meet those needs in the right way and at the right time.

In addition to this we also want our consumers, carers and community members to be meaningfully involved in planning, decision making, monitoring and evaluation in our programs and services.

There are many ways we involve consumers, carers and community members at HRH such as:

• Getting feedback from our consumers and carers and using this feedback to make improvements.
• Having consumers review patient, resident or client formation to ensure that it is meaningful and easy to read and understand.
• Involving consumers, carers and community members in committees and working groups.
• Consumer involvement in planning days, workshops and focus groups.