There is good news for Whitehorse residents with Mitcham Private Hospital being recognised nationally for its innovation and commitment to clinical quality and patient safety.
Mitcham Private has received a $30,000 grant from the Medibank Private Safety and Clinical Improvement Incentive Pool to fund a project to understand why there is an increasing rate of Caesarean births amongst women using the hospital. Caesarean births carry increased risk for the mother and baby, require a longer stay in hospital and add recovery time.
At a presentation ceremony held at the hospital today, Mitcham Private Chief Executive Officer Michael Rozek spoke about the hospital's commitment to continually improve the standards of patient safety and clinical quality.
"The hospital will review all births in 2007 at Mitcham and use an internationally recognised classification system to classify all obstetric cases. Data will be analysed to review the rate of Caesarean births within each classification, and this information will be compared between similar obstetric populations, enabling us to determine if there are any significant variations and possible reasons for them.
"Depending on the reasons identified, changes to clinical practice of that group may be made to improve both mother and baby's health outcomes.
"We thank Medibank Private for their support of our project and are pleased to work together to continually improve patient health outcomes," Mr Rozek.
More than one million dollars has been granted by Medibank Private to hospitals around Australia this year, with Victorian hospitals receiving a total of almost $322,000 to fund quality and safety projects, almost a third of the total funding made available in the current program. In the last two years Medibank Private has provided $1.9 million in funding for 74 quality and safety projects across 65 hospitals.
Medibank Private's Hospital Contract Manager Eric Wirth praised the local projects as being of a particularly high standard.
"Quality and safety is emerging as the number one issue in Australian health care, so it is inspiring that local private hospitals are now being recognised for their effort and innovation.
"Australia has some of the best quality hospital care in the world, but there is always room for improvement, and improvement and innovation should be supported. Medibank Private is proud to be working with hospitals to improve health outcomes, not just for our members, but for everyone.
"And its great to see some real innovation coming not just from the big, metropolitan hospitals, but also from suburban facilities such as Mitcham Private. It is this sort of commitment that is keeping Victorian private hospitals at the forefront of innovation and safety," Mr Wirth said.
The lessons learned from the various quality and safety projects funded over the last two years will be shared throughout the health sector, extending the value of individual projects far beyond the hospitals in which they are run.
ENDS
For further information please contact:
James Connors
Tel: 03 8622 5163 | Mob: 0433 992 677 | email: james_connors@medibank.com.au