Jim McGowan AM, Metro North Board Chair

The Metro North Hospital and Health Service Board met at Redcliffe Hospital on 28 February. As is now customary, Board members and Jackie Hanson and Jane Hancock welcomed some consumers to gain their insights to how the health service was operating, its strengths, and areas where we could improve. We also welcomed Louise O’Riordan as new acting Executive Director at Redcliffe, as a result of the well-deserved appointment of Louise Oriti to the Royal. Congratulations to both Louises!

I continue to be impressed by the consumers’ stories of their experiences with us. One of the consistent themes in all our visits is the importance of engaging with patients about their treatments, before, during and after. An interesting perspective which we all need to reflect upon is how we engage with our elderly patients, particularly when accompanied by a family member or a carer. The feedback here is that sometimes there are assumptions made about the elderly patient’s capacity resulting in our clinicians talking to the family member or carer and not the person having treatment. This can also be true with our First Nations patients and patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Consumers everywhere speak about the individuals who go out of their way to make people feel comfortable. Sometimes it is easy to overlook the simple gestures of goodwill and support but which those patients remember most fondly about their experiences with us.

We can learn much from listening to the lived experiences of patients and consumers, whether those experiences have been positive or negative. That is the essence of a commitment to patient centred care.

On a similar theme, on 1 March I had the pleasure of attending the Grants Awards presentations by the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Foundation.

Firstly, congratulations to the 15 worthy recipients of these important grants. An innovation this year was the provision of some of these research grants related to patient experience. The Foundation sought to support projects which fall outside traditional grant eligibility such as patient education, care leading up to treatment, support of family members, and creating community healthcare resources – all projects which have the ability to touch on thousands of lives each year.

The commitment of Metro North, supported by the RBWH Foundation and The Common Good and our university, industry, community and Government partners, to research and innovation is a strong element of the vision for the future through MN32.

I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous leadership of Michael Hornby at The Common Good. Michael has made a wonderful contribution in his role as the Chief Executive Officer. We wish Michael well in the next phase of his career. We welcome Steve Francia as the new CEO of The Common Good.

Metro North is truly indebted to our Foundations for the support that they provide to us.

We must embrace the need for change if we are to meet the future health needs of people across the country. The case for reform in the health system is clearly articulated in a 2023 publication from Deloitte “Hospitals in the future without walls: What does this mean for the health care delivery systems in the future?”:

“We estimate 22,800 additional acute hospital beds are needed across Australia in the next five years to meet the need to deliver 50% of all new services virtually. Currently about half this number of additional beds are committed through the largest and unprecedented national hospital infrastructure program, worth more than $30 billion. We simply cannot build the beds quickly enough to meet demand and replace our hospital stock. Not only is it necessary to look to virtual and technology-enabled care, it is better.”

And further:

“[That] vision requires all aspects of the system to be truly connected including wellbeing, prevention, primary care, acute care, aged care, and social care services as a starting point.”

The Deloitte report comments:

“There are examples of virtual care in Australia moving in this direction; however, there is an imperative now to move at pace to scale interventions to position our health system for the modelled future demand. The current approach of relying on physical beds, associated workforce allocation and expansion, and ageing infrastructure is not financially and clinically sustainable into the future. The health care workforce is stretched, burnt out and in need of radical new approaches that enable them to focus on caring for patients to the top of their scope of practice.”

No quotes this month, but some ‘food for thought’!

Regards,

Jim.