Robina Private Hospital, Epworth HealthCare and Bethesda Health Care crowned winners of APHA awards

MedTech News: The Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) announced the winners of the 2023 Awards For Excellence, which celebrate clinical excellence, innovation and improved staff wellbeing in Australia’s private hospitals.

APHA CEO Michael Roff said the Awards are an opportunity for hospitals to share their innovative projects with peers, with a view to providing a platform for them that others can emulate.

“We reintroduced the Awards in 2020 to celebrate the high-quality care Australians receive in private hospitals, but also to offer a way for hospital executives to learn from industry exemplars. We have a session at our APHA National Congress each year dedicated to the Awards which aims to provide a snapshot into the finalists’ programs to provoke thoughts and conversations about how that excellence could be shared,” he said.

Mr Roff said the high standard of entries in each of the Award categories showed how much private hospitals had been able to achieve, while continuing to manage COVID-19 patients and deal with the significant challenges posed by ongoing workforce shortages.

The winner for the Clinical Excellence Quality of care and patient outcomes award was Robina Private Hospital in QLD for their ‘Older Persons Mental Health Service’ program.

“This is an excellent model and is able to be replicated widely through the professional networks and collaboration developed with national and other organisations. There has been demonstrative improvement to clinical services and outcomes and detailed involvement of hospital team members at every level and throughout. Involvement of consumers/patients and carers has occurred throughout, and their feedback has been acted upon to make improvements to services,” said the judges.

Epworth HealthCare in VIC was crowned the winner of the Consumer Partnership award with their ‘Clinical Service Improvement Team’ program.

The judges comments included “An excellent model which could and should be replicated across all hospitals! Demonstrable evidence of involving consumers in co-design and collaboration at all levels and across the board.”

The winner for the Staff engagement and wellbeing award was Bethesda Health Care in WA for their ‘Work Health and Safety Staff Wellness Survey’.

“A very good application demonstrating commitment to staff wellbeing. Demonstrates that staff wellbeing is linked to patient satisfaction, for example, patient satisfaction feedback data is closely monitored at Bethesda and as of December 2022 the Net Promoter Score was at an encouraging 9.5 out of 10,” noted the judges.

The APHA Awards are judged by a panel that includes the APHA CEO, the Chair of the Consumer Health Forum and the CEO of Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care. The Awards were presented at the APHA Gala Awards Dinner held in Sydney Monday 27 March 2023.