Page 6 - TOH_Making a difference 2023-2024

CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S
REPORT
This year hasn’t been without its challenges, with changes planned in the way our services will be contracted by Health New Zealand-Te Whatu Ora to a regional approach, and the ongoing shortage of nurses to fill our nursing rosters.
As we prepared for any future changes in the commissioning of services, the Central Region Hospices have worked together to explore where efficiencies can be achieved and are sharing data to benchmark our services to learn from each other.
We are sharing an Informatics and Data Advisor role with Mary Potter Hospice to ensure consistency in the way our patient information is managed, and data is collected.
Maintaining continuity of our high-quality service while carrying nursing vacancies has been challenging. I am grateful for the team, with nurses prepared to be flexible to cover gaps in the roster and ensure the continuity of our service to patients
and whānau, evidenced by the wonderful feedback we receive. I am also grateful for the financial help of our Foundation, which enabled us to raise our nurses’ pay rates to align with those employed in the public hospitals, reducing the risk of resignations from the team. We have been able to recruit for some vacancies, gaining international and local experience.
Funding continued to be our biggest challenge with the budgeting of a $1 million deficit. Our Fundraising and Retail teams did their utmost to meet their budgets, being aware
of the impact the downturn in our economy has had on our communities. We are so very grateful for the support of the many local groups, service clubs and individuals, many who are listed in this report, who have supported us through the year. You make it all possible!
During the year I joined the national representative group,
the Equity and Sustainability Pathway Project Group. This
group of eight Chief Executives is representing all the New Zealand Hospices, working with Hospice New Zealand to design a sustainable, national model of hospice services and an associated commissioning framework. The group is proposing a sustainable costing and pricing model for specialist palliative care services, together with an implementation plan for the service framework, costing and pricing model and commissioning approach.
Service highlights
Excellent progress has been made on the development of our Clinical Action Plan, defining the service delivery goals and the projects required to meet these. This is to ensure we have robust, sustainable systems and processes to create a resilient service. Using co-design principles, our Clinical teams participated in every step of the design process.
It is very important that we know what we’re doing well and what changes we could make to the services we provide
to benefit all who engage with us. Throughout the year,
we progressed forming a Consumer Advisory Group, an independent group who will analyse feedback we’ve already had from those who use our services, and actively reach into our communities to get insights into our performance and what we could introduce to meet their needs.
A Certification Audit was undertaken this year when our services that patients and whānau receive were audited against the Ngā Paerewa: Health and Disability Services Standards. Feedback from the auditors was positive, commending our staff for their excellent care. While we have several corrective actions they are related to better integration of our systems.
As part of our hospice’s 44-year anniversary celebrations, we also celebrated our hospice identity with the launch of ‘Te Mahau’ a new Te Ao Māori resource in the workplace. Introductory sessions were held with staff and volunteers discussing our collective responsibility for all of us to support positive outcomes for Māori patients and whānau.
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