Dear colleagues,
Today marks our current CEO’s last day with Metro North. I want to give a huge farewell to Shaun. I’ve worked alongside Shaun and the Metro North team for the past three and a half years and seen the organisation benefit greatly from his passion for healthcare and vision for ensuring we are prepared for future demand. Shaun is also a lovely guy to work with and he’ll be very much missed. While we wish him well, we focus on keeping Metro North on steer to be the best and the nicest health service, continue tackling challenges head on, respond to the COVID pandemic, maintain our excellent performance and quality care and continuing to deliver against our MN32 plan.
We are still seeing unprecedented activity and huge responses to COVID-19 across the health service. Thank you for your responsiveness in this space.
Interestingly a recent survey by Queensland Health Improvement Unit assessed the public awareness, or lack thereof, of alternatives to hospitalisation, 64 per cent of consumers were unaware that care at home was an option. We have capacity in our Metro North Hospital in the Home program, so please consider this for suitable patients.
There is work underway by the surgical teams to ensuring unplanned surgery is performed within 24 hours – thank you all.
Rapid Assessment Clinics are being stood up to support pathways out of our EDs and more beds are opening at STARS from the 1st week in August to support us with timely flow.
Expressions of interest for the 2022/23 LINK and SEED Innovation Grant Round will open on Monday. If you have a great idea worth pitching that will help us improve patient outcomes or experiences in some way, more information is available on the Innovation intranet page.
You will have seen that while some restrictions have been eased, the Chief Health Officer has directed that we continue to wear masks for the next week at least. We need to remember we are still grappling with COVID-19. The virus is still very active around the world and will be with us for a while yet. All staff should take the opportunity to get vaccinated as soon as appointments are available. I also want to remind everything that we should still be social distancing and following the CHO directions. Stay home if you’re unwell and get tested.
Next Thursday we’re holding the Metro North Research Excellence Awards. Good luck to all the finalists!
Regards,
Jackie