Quality of care

Accreditation

Our hospitals consistently demonstrate exceptional performance beyond what is required by the National Safety and Quality Health Service standards and our hospitals are also accredited by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS).

ACHS sets the mandatory standards to be met by all public and private hospitals.

We assess our performance in all aspects of patient care including medication management, clinical handover, infection control, complaints management and preventing falls.

We continually review our results and make changes to processes and policies where necessary to further enhance patient care.

Patient satisfaction and experience

St John of God Health Care is focused on providing excellent and compassionate care to all of our patients and clients, and requests feedback from patients and clients so we can monitor and continuously improve our care.

St John of God Health Care uses a Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure patient experience in our acute and mental health hospitals. 

The NPS survey asks patients and clients, “Based on your latest experience, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend St John of God Health Care to a friend or colleague?” St John of God Health Care also asks for additional feedback based on the Australian Hospital Patient Experience Question Set (AHPEQS) or the YES (Your Experience of Service) questions dependant on the patient admission. 

As at 30 June 2020, the St John of God Health Care NPS score across all hospitals for inpatients was 75.5, an increase from 71.3 in June 2019.

We use patient feedback to continuously improve the care we provide, and some our recent initiatives include:

• empowering our local management teams and frontline managers to make immediate changes to processes based on patient feedback
• changing staffing models of care to better meet patient needs
• introducing a program to support our caregivers in putting into practice our values and commitment to excellent and compassionate care. 

Infection control

Our hospitals achieved a hand hygiene compliance rate of 83.6 per cent, exceeding the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care’s national benchmark of 80 per cent.

Hand hygiene is one of the best ways to stop hospital acquired infections so, as a priority, we educate and train all caregivers in the World Health Organisation’s five moments for hand hygiene:

• before touching a patient
• before a procedure
• after a procedure or body fluid exposure risk
• after touching a patient
• after touching a patient’s surroundings.  

We rank significantly higher than national targets for hand hygiene according to Hand Hygiene Australia. Our auditors complete hand hygiene compliance audits three times a year and we participate in the Hand Hygiene Australia national hand hygiene strategy to continually improve our hand hygiene rates.

We monitor rates of staphylococcus aureus bloodstream (SAB) infections that arise during our care, and aim to eliminate these wherever possible.

Falls

St John of God Health Care hospitals achieve a comparable rate of falls relative to peers. There is no national target for falls in hospitals, so we compare ourselves to other Australian hospitals, as reported by the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards. 

The risk of a fall in one of our facilities is very minimal because we actively work with our caregivers and our patients to eliminate risks through ongoing education and promotion.  We encourage our patients to use call bells fitted in all rooms and to seek help from our caregivers when moving and showering.   

Falls can injure patients and impact their recovery and independence. The risk of falling in hospital is heightened because of a patient’s illness, a change or introduction of new medications or just being in an unfamiliar environment.