Dear colleagues,
Next week is Mel Carter’s last week with Metro North. Alister Whitta will be the temporary Chief Finance and Corporate Officer while recruitment is underway. Alister is coming to us from Metro South where he has previously acted in the Chief Finance Officer role and held a senior position in the finance team. Alister will start on Monday for a weeklong handover with Mel. Please join me in welcoming Alister to Metro North.
I am pleased to announce that Kate Copeland AM has been appointed to the newly created role of Executive Director Strategy, Planning, Assets and Infrastructure. This new role reflects the critical links between the core functions of these teams and builds on their work to drive and support effective, efficient and sustainable healthcare delivery including optimal performance of our built assets.
Our Metro North Staff Excellence Awards will be held on Friday 3 December at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. This year’s event will be a gala dinner open to all staff with entertainment, a sit down three course meal, and the awards presentation. Tables and tickets will go on sale next week. Award finalists will be announced next week.
This week the Minister launched Making Tracks Together: Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Equity Framework. The framework will guide health equity strategies across Queensland Health, including Metro North. The framework is underpinned by a commitment to improve First Nations health and wellbeing outcomes by:
- actively eliminating racial discrimination and institutional racism within the service
- increasing access to healthcare services
- influencing the social, cultural and economic determinants of health
- delivering sustainable, culturally safe and responsive healthcare services; and
- working with First Nations peoples, communities and organisations to design, deliver, monitor and review health services.
Metro North will be developing our Heath Equity Strategy over the next few months. I encourage you to read the Making Tracks Together framework and look at ways your team or department can contribute to these shared goals.
On 26 October the Deputy Prime Minister and the Premier of Queensland signed an Intergovernmental Agreement for the provision of health support and education services to Norfolk Island. These services are currently provided by New South Wales.
This is an exciting time for us as Metro North has been selected as the key hospital and health service to provide a range of clinical and corporate governance services and to support the health team that work in the Commonwealth-operated Norfolk Island Health and Residential Aged Care Service. Sam Betros and Michele Gardner recently visited Norfolk Island and met with the health team (and a few cows that were roaming freely in town) to understand the current services and talk about how we can work together in the future.
The next steps will be the development and finalisation of a health service schedule and detailed transition planning ahead of the end of 2021. Sam’s team is leading this work and will be reaching out to clinicians and other staff to be part of the planning process.
Congratulations to The Prince Charles Hospital which was ranked 43 on the NewsWeek ‘2022 World’s Best Specialized Hospitals – Cardiology’ list, and first in Australia. RBWH also ranked 158th in the world on the list and 91st on the oncology list (second in Australia). TPCH was also ranked the 68th best cardiac surgery service in the world, coming third in Australia.
In the Have your Say staff survey I received a number of messages about improving the physical environments of some teams. I have asked the Executive Directors of our directorates to identify priorities for minor works to address these issues.
Enjoy the long weekend.
Regards,
Jackie