Safer Care Victoria

Reducing compulsory treatment

Reducing compulsory treatment was a key recommendation of the 2021 Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

About the framework

The framework aims to improve the pathway of care for individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviours and support their families, carers and supporters. It also builds workplace culture and workforce capability and confidence to support optimal care.

Elimination of restrictive practices

The MHIP partners with clinical and non-clinical workforce teams to design and test improvements that:

In 2022-23, Safer Care Victoria worked with Albury Wodonga Health, Albury Wodonga Private Hospital and Insight Private Hospital to contact around 2,000 patients who had a colonoscopy performed in the region since 1 January 2018.

An investigation had found that some colonoscopies performed in the region were incomplete, which may have affected the accuracy of the resulting diagnoses.

Many affected patients underwent a repeat colonoscopy as a precautionary measure.

The Duty of candour is a new legislative requirement for Victorian health services, which came into effect on 30 November 2022.  

The Duty of candour builds on existing elements of open disclosure as outlined in the Australian Open Disclosure Framework and encourages open, honest communication when a patient has suffered a serious adverse patient safety event while receiving care.    

Sometimes things go wrong in healthcare, which can result in a patient being harmed. In these cases it’s important for the health service to:

• understand what happened
• understand how it happened
• make recommendations to reduce the chance it will happen again.

Learning from these events is a powerful tool to prevent harm going forward.

This page provides information on Safer Care Victoria’s role and the actions health services take when things have gone seriously wrong with patient care.