What is the Improvement Hub?

Clinical Governance enables everyone from an individual clinician to the Chief Executive of the District to be accountable for the quality and safety of the health services delivered. The Clinical Governance Directorate (CGD) works with staff to achieve services that are timely, safe, efficient, effective & appropriate, equitable and patient centred. One way of achieving this is through Quality Improvement activities.

Quality Improvement consists of systematic and continuous actions that lead to measurable improvement in health care services for patients / family and staff. Clinical Practice Improvement is a quality improvement methodology used to assess and improve processes of patient care and health service delivery.  By applying CPI principles to an identified problem, we can measure and analyse the extent and causes of the problem, identify interventions &/or redesign care delivery processes, and evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions in achieving quality improvement.

What is Quality Improvement?

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has a short video describing what 'Quality Improvement is'

For further information on CPI and quality improvement tools visit:

NSLHD Clinical Governance

The Clinical Excellence Commission

Local and District Clinical Governance Units can provide information and advice on undertaking quality improvement projects. For further information contact your quality manager or visit the intranet page for resources and information on clinical governance and quality improvement

• HKH: Cain Byrnes
• NBHS: Fiona Hort
• PACH: Ralph Forbes
• MHDA: Kathryn Walkley
• NSLHD: Victoria Walton

Essentials of Care (EoC) is a framework which aims to enhance the experiences of patients, families, carers and the staff involved in the delivery of care. The program focuses on ongoing evaluation and development of safe, effective and compassionate clinical workplace cultures. The program initially started in Nursing but due to its success it now supports multi-disciplinary practice in both acute and community settings.

Healthcare teams are engaged in collaborative processes that utilise evidence from patients and their families, workplace data and research to inform improvements that impact on patient quality and safety at the point where care is experienced.

South Eastern Sydney LHD have developed a short video explaining EoC.

For more information on EoC see the NSW Health EoC page.

If you would like further information please contact:

• Sue Strachan: [email protected]
• Colette.Terry: [email protected]

The Whole of Health Program is a NSW state government initiative. The Whole of Health Program was launched in 2013 (previously called Whole of Hospital) to support local health districts in driving the strategic change needed to improve access to care and patient flow within New South Wales public hospitals. 

Centrally facilitated but locally led, the Ministry of Health is working with its Whole of Health partners to help Local Health Districts develop capability in devising and implementing sustainable patient flow improvement strategies, whilst sharing knowledge and experience across the sector.

In 2016? the focus of the program has expanded to include the out of hospital solutions and partnerships that better connect the entire patient journey, integrate care and reduce demand on acute services. 

See the WoH information via NSW health.

Sydney North HealthPathways is a collaboration between Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD) and the Northern Sydney PHN using the HealthPathways model developed in Canterbury, New Zealand.

HealthPathways is an online local health information portal. It is a resource intended to support General Practice, but could be used by hospital and primary care clinicians in the community. Information in the portal is peer reviewed and region specific.

HealthPathways supports:

• Service navigation
• Condition management
• Referral to specialists when appropriate
• Access to reference materials
• Access to patient educational resources

HealthPathways are developed and agreed by general practitioners, hospital clinicians, and a wide range of other health professionals involved in local patient care. HealthPathways is a collaboration between the Sydney North Primary Health Network (SNPHN) and the Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD). 

HealthPathways is dynamic, with new HealthPathways constantly under development and existing HealthPathways regularly reviewed in light of changing evidence, technology, and local circumstances

If you would like more information on the HealthPathways Northern Sydney please visit the website or contact [email protected]

The Kolling Institute is a key research partner of NSLHD. For more than 80 years, the Kolling Institute has been turning scientific discoveries into medical realities. The Kolling Institute work with the community to take research from the laboratories to patients, across all stages of the lifespan. 

The Kolling can support clinical improvement by providing advice on undertaking research and access to grants/funding. Please see the Kolling Institute's website for details of programs and the scope of work or the following links below:

• Kolling Institute Grants and Scholarships
• NSLHD Research Office
• Nursing and Midwifery Research: [email protected]  or visit the Nursing and Midwifery research intranet page if you are on an internally networked device*.

What is innovation?

Video of Innovation

'A significant positive change'  Edutopia 2014.
'We cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.'   A. Einstein
'A new idea, device or method'  Wikipedia.
'It's not the results that are necessarily innovative, but the way the group goes about doing its work.'  Scott Berkun, innovation expert.

But what's the difference between Quality Improvement and Innovation? The Institute for Healthcare Improvement tackled that questions recently in an article. Kedar Mate summaries the article by saying 'Both innovation and improvement are change, and both are trying to make something better…. Improvement is iterative and typically incremental… (innovation is the) creation of something fundamentally new and different from what we've experienced before.'

If we go into innovation thinking about being innovative we may inadvertently stifle our thoughts and our ability to look at problems differently. However If you focus your efforts on solving real problems and ‘if you succeed, innovation, in all its forms, will likely take care of itself’ Scott Berkun (innovation expert).

Person-Centred care is a way of thinking about and adapting care that sees the patient using the health services as equal partners in planning, developing and monitoring care according to their clinical condition to make sure it meets their individual needs. This means putting people and their families (and carers) at the centre of decisions and seeing them as experts, working along-side professionals to get the best outcomes.

There is a discussion paper from the ACSQHC (2010) Patient centre carer: Improving quality and staff by focusing care on patients and consumers that supports this way of working.

If you have any questions about the NSLHD Person Centred Care program please contact Ken Caldwell.