Our work

Involved in an incident review?

This information will help you understand what documents to collect and keep as part of the review, and answer some of the common questions we receive about how you create, distribute, store and retain review documents.

Disclaimer: While it does not constitute legal advice, this information is useful for anyone involved in an incident review, including health service staff, consumers and external panel members. It is also helpful for health service executives, legal counsel, and quality, risk and safety leaders.

Partnering with consumers is key to driving improvements in healthcare for all Victorians.

Consumers have first-hand experience in the healthcare system and provide unique feedback that should be incorporated into all levels of the health system.

This guide provides information for healthcare agencies on how to  engage with consumer representatives.

This information will support you and your health service to partner with consumer representatives.

1. Plan

When planning to engage a consumer representative, it’s important to set clear goals and outcomes. 

Ask the following questions:

Complete 

Summary

This project delivered education focused on two major risk factors for stillbirth: fetal growth restriction and decreased fetal movements.

In partnership with the Stillbirth Centre for Research Excellence (CRE), we implemented:

Complete

Summary

We continued to expand our Maternity and Neonatal ehandbooks, which give clinicians providing maternity care 24-hour access to pathways of care regardless of service location, capability or skill of workforce.  

Outcome

In 2018-19 we added a further 13 topics for our online maternity ehandbook, including antepartum haemorrhage, birth after caesarean, breech presentation, gestational diabetes and more.

See a full list of our ehandbook topics.

Complete

Summary

Gastro-oesophageal reflux is common in infants but is often misdiagnosed and treated unnecessarily with acid suppression therapy (AST) which can cause harm.

Prior to the pilot project commencing, we found that:

Complete

Summary

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospital patients worldwide. It is a time-critical illness requiring early identification and prompt intervention to improve patient mortality outcomes.

We introduced a statewide approach to sepsis assessment and management, and helped emergency departments and urgent care centres recognise and initially manage patients experiencing sepsis.

COMPLETE

Summary

Paediatric tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy are the most common surgical procedures in childhood, usually for obstructed sleep apnoea or frequent tonsillitis. However, rates of tonsillectomy vary greatly depending on location.

Around 70 hospitals in Victoria perform tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies. Our data shows around 10% of hospitals have  readmission rates higher than expected for these surgeries.

Complete - 2020

Summary

In Victoria a rapid response call occurs every 15.9 minutes.

Increasing demand on rapid response services results in stretched resources and inconsistent system responsiveness.

We will reduce repeat rapid response calls and associated impact on rapid response team resources, by producing a resource package to help services:

COMPLETE - 2020

Summary

Victorian Healthcare Experience Survey data shows renal patients generally feel less involved in decisions about their care.

To improve this, we have developed statewide minimum criteria for informed consent.

These documents aim to improve patient involvement in decisions about their care and reduce variation in the information they receive when consenting to treatment for end stage kidney disease.