Consultation Hub

Destination 2030: Great Care for Central Queenslanders was endorsed by the Central Queensland Hospital and Health Board on 27 October 2017. It will now guide the planning, resourcing and delivery of Great Care for Central Queenslanders into the future.

The strategic blueprint was finalised after a thorough review of feedback from an extensive, six week, community and staff consultation. Feedback from staff, patients, consumers, partners, community groups, councils and key partners resulted is changes.

The online consultation received 101 responses and 50 pages of feedback. We also received input at 16 separate staff consultation sessions including six all-staff video conferences, 11 community consultations, emailed feedback and a written submission from Rockhampton Regional Council, feedback from Members of Parliament and a range of other partners and stakeholders.

CQ Health values the contribution and support our vision has received. During the coming weeks and months there will be many significant announcements as we deliver improvements for our community and develop care closer to home.

The consultation delivered 50 pages of feedback which included:

•  No respondent suggested any of the five objectives be removed or replaced
• Finances and ability to recruit were identified as the major impediments to achieving the strategic vision
• 90% supported our ambition to grow Rockhampton as the centre of excellence
• 92% supported our ambition to “Close the Gap”
• 95% agree that as the centre of excellence, Rockhampton Hospital should provide expert support to the key health hubs.

The feedback resulted in a range of improvements including:

• Strengthening the reference to the strategic partnership with defence forces;
• Inclusion of a reference to Queensland Health’s Queensland Central Regional Planning process;
• Strengthening of the Great Learning and Research objective;
• Specific reference to partnering with the Primary Health Network;
• Reference to an improved, contemporary physical environment for our patients consumers and staff;
• Working with education and industry to build research and education capability;
• Highlighting the development of Gladstone Hospital as a comprehensive general hospital for the Gladstone Region and the development of a Women’s and Children’s Centre for the provision of a broad range of maternity, medicine and women’s and children’s services; and
• Inclusion of our commitment to work closely with the Woorabinda Council and other partners to improve the health of the Woorabinda community.

For your views on the draft Consumer and Community Engagement Strategy 2014-2018 - in particular whether you thought the objectives, measures, policy and legislative context, identification of key issues and approach to engaging with diverse communities were meaningful, informative and useful.

For the most part, you agreed that the objectives and measures were meaningful and related to what you expect from the health service. Some of you had concerns about whether the measures would provide an accurate evaluation of our consumer and community engagement efforts. There was also concern the measure around fewer patient complaints would actually reflect a reluctance to complain rather than an improvement in engagement. Most of you agreed that the policy and legislative context was useful and that the section on engaging with diverse communities provided a good outline. Some of you did not find the section on identifying key issues to be useful and easy to understand. You indicated a need for further encouragement of positive feedback along with complaints, a need to improve consistency and that there was not enough plain language used in the document. Concern was also raised that the strategy put more emphasis on receiving complaints than compliments.

We retained the key concepts, measures and objectives of the Consumer and Community Engagement Strategy 2014-2018 and strengthened it by adding some of the important ideas we received. We reviewed the measures and included one regarding the improved ability to access consistent engagement opportunities throughout health service. The effectiveness of the measures will be reviewed to ensure they are appropriate in future strategies. The section on identifying key issues was rewritten to ensure it was easier to understand and easier to find more information. The Have Your Say Campaign was added to the strategy. It encourages all forms of feedback, including compliments and complaints. The strategy will now go to the CQHH Board for approval.