Strategic Plan

The core of the NSW public health system is providing safe, high-quality, accessible, person-centred care. At the Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC), we seek to make a positive difference to patients, staff, and their communities by equipping healthcare workers with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to create a culture that ensures patients receive safe, high-quality care. We are specialists in safety and partners in improvement, building capability in NSW Health entities to build positive safety cultures locally.

Global statistics show high rates of preventable harm in healthcare, including Australia, where complications cost our public hospitals billions annually, so our role as stewards of clinical governance leadership is crucial. We strive to reduce patient harm and drive continuous safety improvements through collaboration and expertise.

Our Nine-year Strategy and iterative three-year strategic plans, commencing with 2024–2027, are the results of meaningful collaboration with our stakeholders. They reflect our collective commitment to excellence and outline how we will work within the NSW Health system to embed and mature a safety culture under the NSW Health Safety System Model. This Strategic Plan 2024–2027 will be operationalised by means of annual strategy implementation plans. The first implementation plan for 2024–2025 will be developed July – October 2024 and will contain detail of our actions to support implementation of the 2024–2027 strategic objectives outlined in Table 2.

Evolving healthcare landscape

In the dynamic and ever-evolving healthcare landscape, equipping and enabling the NSW healthcare workforce to tackle emerging challenges and seize opportunities for continuous patient safety improvements is vital. By building strong partnerships with healthcare workers and consumers and promoting a safety culture, we prepare for future shifts in the NSW Health system, including technological advancements and sustainability.

The CEC has adopted the NSW Health vision of a sustainable health system that delivers outcomes that matter most to patients and the community, is personalised, invests in wellness and is digitally enabled. We adhere to the NSW Health CORE values of Collaboration, Openness, Respect and Empowerment in all our interactions internally and across the state.

Established in 2004, the CEC is the primary entity in NSW Health for system-wide clinical governance leadership and safety assurance. It is a pillar agency that simultaneously sits alongside and is integrated with the Ministry of Health and local health districts. This position enables the agency to take a broader view of safety and quality issues, learn from the variation across the NSW Health system, provide independent guidance and advice and respond rapidly when system-wide issues arise.

Our focus includes policy development, workforce capability, and fostering safety cultures to improve clinical care across NSW. We prioritise understanding human factors and clinical risks to prevent harm while equipping stakeholders with essential safety knowledge and resources. As safety experts, we lead continuous improvement efforts in alignment with NSW Health system needs, tailoring programs, tools, and training to empower local health districts (Districts) and specialty health networks (Networks) to build sustainable safety cultures under the NSW Health Safety System Model.

Our strategic delivery revolves around three key groups: CEC staff, healthcare workers and healthcare consumers.

Recognition of lived experience

We recognise and value consumers, patients, carers, loved ones and staff as partners in healthcare. The voices of people with lived experience are powerful. Their contribution is vital to the work of continuously improving safety and quality in our health system.

CEC staff

By embracing a generative approach to safety, we will redefine everyday work practices and relationships within the NSW Health system. This approach fosters positive attitudes towards change, enhances wellbeing, and prioritises psychological safety. By viewing change as an adaptive challenge, we will drive innovation and focus change activities towards promoting human system elements that drive safety innovation. We will work on strategic alignment and collaboration as core to our approach in working across the organisation to achieve the aims of our nine-year strategy and three-year strategic plans.

Healthcare workers

We aim to promote and support a safety culture that protects patients and supports the wellbeing of NSW healthcare workers. This entails cultivating psychologically safe workplaces where healthcare workers feel empowered to voice safety concerns and actively engage in improvement efforts. Through capability initiatives, we equip healthcare workers with knowledge, tools and resources to enhance safety practices and drive continuous improvement across the healthcare system.

Health consumers

Healthcare consumers are beneficiaries and active partners in our efforts to embed and mature a safety culture. People who engage with the healthcare system are at risk of poor health outcomes for different reasons, in addition to those who face inequitable access to healthcare as a result of their vulnerability. This vulnerability may be determined or influenced by intersecting characteristics or factors, including acute illness or a chronic condition, age, race, gender, language spoken, ability or disability, physical or mental health status and social determinants of health. The CEC is committed to amplifying the voices of consumers with firsthand experience of the NSW Health system, building strong partnerships, and embracing co-design principles to gain valuable insights to drive meaningful change and improve patient safety outcomes.

We partner with healthcare consumers, Districts and Networks, the Ministry of Health and other NSW Government agencies to deliver safer experiences for patients and staff. We will continue to collaborate with stakeholders to deliver system-wide safety, culturally appropriate care and legislative and policy responsibilities by:

• Strengthening the culture within healthcare, nurturing psychological safety for patients, carers and staff
• Enhancing communication and interactions between patients, their families and carers and healthcare workers
• Empowering patients and their carers to share in decision-making about their care
• Providing reliable information for patients.

The CEC collaborates with Districts/Networks and health consumers to ensure culturally appropriate care and enhance health outcomes across the NSW Health system. Recognising the interconnectedness of staff wellbeing and patient safety, we address both aspects simultaneously.

We partner with various divisions and branches of the Ministry of Health to promote patient, clinical, and system safety. Additionally, we collaborate with NSW Health Pillars, academic institutions, and other stakeholders to effectively address complex challenges and opportunities. Through strategic partnerships, we nurture safe healthcare environments and minimise avoidable harm.

As a knowledge-driven and learning organisation, the CEC leverages safety intelligence, diverse data and staff expertise to foster a culture of safety improvement across the NSW Health system. We will lead the development of evidence-based safety improvements in collaboration with Districts and Networks, focusing on predictive and proactive safety measures.

Our approach draws on data and insights to monitor incident trends and clinical outcomes, enabling proactive safety measures through real-time insights and connected technologies. We promote frontline access to relevant, timely data and provide support for interpretation to drive safety improvements. We aim to identify new data sources and increase clinician expertise in data exploration, analysis and synthesis.

Our priorities are guided by incident data triangulated with patient outcome and experience data together with healthcare worker related data. We employ staff expertise to respond to system needs including critical incident management and guidance on statewide initiatives like infection prevention and control. Further, we provide tailored support to teams following serious adverse events, ensuring comprehensive expertise is available to support response and mitigation.

The CEC’s nine-year strategy (below) outlines our future direction. It is divided into 3 x three-year strategic plans that outline our approach to achieving long-term goals while enabling the organisation to adapt to future health challenges and opportunities.

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The CEC’s strategic plan 2024-2027 (below) outlines the strategic objectives we will achieve over the next 3 years, aligned to our three-year strategic focus areas. Achieving the CEC’s three-year focus areas and objectives will move us towards our nine-year strategic directions shown in table 1, above.

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