Report of Operations - South West Alliance of Rural Health

Corporate Services Report33RECORDSDuring the year Records’staff continued their studiesin Certificate III in Business(Medical Administration) withhalf the modules required nowsuccessfully completed. Theknowledge gained from thiscourse to date has been a usefulresource for Records’ staff andhas been applied in day to dayduties.In addition to the 300 healthcarerecords that were destroyed lastyear a further 200 healthcarerecords were identified fordestruction and disposedof accordingly. The task ofidentification, destruction andnotification of healthcare recordsin the compactus is ongoing andwill be a continual practice.In the coming year Records’staff will strive to complete theirscheduled training with a view forcompletion in late 2012.The Public Records Office ofVictoria (PROV) has implementednew record standards relating tostorage. Records’ staff attendedtraining in these new standardsand will be taking steps andidentifying methods to ensurecompliance.The engagement of a HealthInformation Manager on acontracted basis has beenextremely beneficial to OtwayHealth. She has not only ensuredoptimum funding for all episodesof inpatient care but has providedvaluable training across theservice and assistance withquality and audit practices.FINANCEThe Finance team has once againsuccessfully closed the booksfor the 2010/2011 financial year.Oracle, the accounting softwarepackage introduced in 2010 bythe State Government, is stillchallenging however, with thepurchase of Power Budget (anadditional reporting tool) we arenow able to produce user friendlyreports and budgets for theManagement Team.Two internal audits have beenconducted during the past year.The first audit undertaken wasfor Payroll and Human ResourceAdministration and the second forProcurement. Both audits werevery favourable for Otway Healthwith minimum recommendationsfor improvement.QUALITY MANAGEMENTAugust 2011 marks the end ofan accreditation cycle for OtwayHealth and following a review,a new cycle will commence.‘Accreditation’ relates to beingaccredited against a set ofstandards. Otway Health, likemany other organisations, needsan accreditation certificate inorder to prove that standardshave been met, and in order forconsumers of our services tobe confident that Otway Healthcan meet their expectations. Anaccreditation certificate also hasa direct impact on the fundingfor our services and the ability tooffer a diverse range of services.Otway Health has chosenQICSA (Quality Improvement& Community ServicesAccreditation) to be theiraccreditation provider andin return Otway Health hasagreed to strive to meet the QICStandards. The QIC Standardsrequire us to demonstrate thatOtway Health has a qualitysystem. ‘Quality System’ is theterm used to describe the overallframework and the variouselements and processes involvedin quality improvement.To achieve accreditation anumber of systems need to be inplace and working well together.These systems are analysedand reviewed for effectiveness,accuracy and relevance at reviewtime and the feedback from thereview formulates the QualityWork Plan. The Quality Work Planbecomes a working document toguide the quality improvementprocess for the next three years,in addition to the various qualityinitiatives that staff, managementand our volunteers implementas they develop. Otway Healthwelcomes QICSA’s feedback andlooks to the next accreditationcycle to further improve our corefunctions and processes.