Northern Health Research Week was proud to host Dr Stephen Duckett, as the morning session speaker on the topic Safer care saves money.

In front of the full lecture theatre, Dr Duckett emphasized how important it is to measure all complications that occur in hospitals and tracking them over time.

According to Dr Duckett, Australia could save $1.5 billion a year on health spending by improving the safety of patient care in hospitals.

“Safety is not just an issue for doctors – it’s a hospital and a system issue,” he said.

Dr Duckett also touched on the accreditation system, as he feels Australia’s hospital accreditation system should be modified.

“The accreditation system should be moved from an event which happens once every few years, to something which embeds the existing improvement process in the hospital,” he said.

Dr Duckett added that studies show public reporting is associated with better hospital outcomes, as it makes hospitals change as a result of the visibility to the community.

Learning from other hospitals and collaboration is something Dr Duckett strongly encourages and feels that “when we are doing something good, we should share it with others”.

One of the examples was Ian Brand, Chief Executive Officer of our predecessor hospital PANCH, who was focused on the hospital being the best at the time.  He looked at other hospitals with best practice and sent a team out to learn from what they were doing best.

“If we work in a collaborative ideology, we should be comfortable about people learning from us,” he added.

To hear more about today’s topic, please see the video below:

Featured Image: Jennifer Williams, Board Chair; Dr Stephen Duckett; Jane Poxon, Acting Chief Executive Northern Health