Our agency and structure

We are an administrative office of the Department of Health under Section 11 of the Public Administration Act 2004. 

While we stand apart in many respects, we work closely with the department and other government agencies to ensure we collaborate, make good decisions and don’t duplicate efforts. 

Our agency is led by:

• a chief executive officer who reports directly to the Secretary, Department of Health
• our executive leadership team, comprising Victoria’s chief clinical officers and the senior leaders of our four branches.

Meet our leadership team

Our structure and functions

Clinical and Professional Leadership

• Provides expert advice and champions key projects through clinical chiefs and senior advisors
• Provides key contacts for senior clinicians on quality and safety matters
• Represents us on state and national bodies

Safety

• Specialises in data analysis and research to provide insights and knowledge to support learning across the system
• Identifies and responds to quality and safety signals across the system to support early identification of safety issues and best quality of care
• Works with sector leaders to embed continuous improvement
• Leads Victoria’s response to adverse patient safety events and concerns
• Supports CCOPMM, the Victorian Perioperative Consultative Council and the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board

Improvement

• Specialises in healthcare improvement and co-design and innovation
• Leads our biggest, results-oriented improvement collaboratives in priority areas including mental health, in partnership with health services to improve health outcomes for Victorians
• Ensures the consumer voice is central to our work
• Builds a sustainable network of improvement experts (both healthcare workers and lived experience experts) to enable continuous system improvement and innovation

Engagement

• Drives our strategic planning and response
• Manages our workforce, processes and finances to enable delivery of our strategy
• Includes learning health networks that target specific priorities and areas of risk and bring clinicians, consumers, academics and improvement specialists together with the aim to have a deeper and more sustained impact on safety and patient outcomes 
• Develops evidence-based guidance for clinicians 
• Engages purposefully and systematically with consumers, clinicians, health services and subject matter experts to ensure quality and safety improvement is a key agenda across the state
• Builds capability and skill in improvement, co-design and clinical governance across the health care system to align safety and improvement