Authored by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care with medical journalist Nicole MacKee
All aboard in tackling healthcare variation Governing body and clinician engagement critical
Professor Erwin Loh, National Chief Medical Officer and Group General Manager Clinical Governance for St Vincent’s Health Australia
When a hospital in the St Vincent’s Health Australia group was found to be an outlier in bloodstream infections, all levels of leadership
The investigation found that the ICU was using central line insertion packs that were not best practice, and this was quickly addressed.
and the local clinical team swung into action to tackle the problem.
‘Sometimes variation has nothing to do with individual practices, it’s to do with the system,’
Professor Erwin Loh, National Chief Medical Officer and Group General Manager Clinical Governance for St Vincent’s Health Australia, says a higher than average rate of central line-
he says, noting that, in this case, low hand hygiene rates among doctors and poor documentation had also contributed to the issue. To find out how to improve these processes,
associated bloodstream infections was detected via the hospital’s key performance indicators. ‘It was in an intensive care unit (ICU), so we
clinicians spent time at another hospital in the group that had much lower infection rates. Professor Loh says improvement was swift
got the infectious diseases physicians and intensive care physicians together to talk, with the head of the ICU on board to oversee the investigation and lead the change,’ Professor Loh says.
because the clinical team was supported to carry out their own investigations and to learn from peers.
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The Health Advocate • MAY 2021
