From accreditation to HR

Day one started with the welcome and AGM, followed by an open session to allow delegates to get to know each other and discuss local issues. We were seated together by region, which was useful. Medicare changes were a shared concern for all Australian practices, for instance, but not an issue, of course, for the New Zealand team.

There was a strong focus on accreditation this year and Brett Mannison, the founder and director of Logicq, presented on his company’s software solution for quality management in the health sector. He focused on showing us how this solution assists with managing all of the requirements for achieving accreditation. It includes registers for documents, risk management, incidents, complaints, patients’ feedback, training and development, contracts and accreditation. It’s a great tool for assisting practices to manage their accreditation and is set up for both New Zealand and Australia, referencing the relevant standards for both countries.

Other sessions on accreditation included one from Simon Janda, RANZCO’s professional development manager, who spoke briefly about practice accreditation using RANZCO’s Nucleus programme. This is free for all member practices and is a wonderful tool for smaller practices who are new to accreditation. While Anna Maria Gibb discussed PracticeHub, a software solution that assists practices in Australia with compliance for accreditation. It provides many policy templates and references the Australian Healthcare Standards, but is not, yet, set up for New Zealand.

Dave Wenban, managing director of the Australian Health Industry Group, delivered three sessions covering various human resources (HR) topics, including performance management, effective interviewing and staffing contracts. The sessions were informative and, although the examples provided were all based on Australian legislation, the principles were still relevant for practice in New Zealand.

The last speaker of the day was Chris Johnson, managing director of Horizon HR, who discussed the trickier end of HR, including bullying, harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Again, this session was informative, but the references were all to Australian legislation. One key takeaway, however, was to act quickly to deal with any issues you become aware of in line with your country’s legislation.

Legal pitfalls in social media

Highlights from day two included a presentation from Morag Smith, a senior solicitor from Avant Law, on social media. Whilst all of the data was Australian, the content was still very relevant for all attendees given the influence of social media in all realms of our lives today. Facebook remains the most used social media platform and can be used positively by practices as long as they understand the risks and how best to manage their account. There are new legislative changes coming in Australia in February around privacy, which will no doubt be followed by New Zealand at some point. Two key points from Morag’s talk was that all practices should have a social media policy and provide training to their staff on privacy, and to ensure you’ve removed the ability for patients to write a review or comment directly on your Facebook site.

St John’s, benchmarking and keeping your cool

On day three, Cheryl Bushe-Jones, business development manager for St John Ambulance, spoke about St John’s community transport service, which is now available in Western Australia. It’s a wonderful service, particularly relevant for elderly ophthalmology patients who need transportation support, especially as so many are visually-impaired. The service is run by volunteer drivers who are all professionally trained. St John’s has partnered with the Perth Eye Hospital to provide pick-up and drop-off services for all their surgical patients. The drivers escort patients into their homes and settle them in. Cheryl encouraged everyone to go back home and approach their local St John’s to see if there are any plans to establish a similar service in their regions.

Another highlight of the last day was Scott Bell, from Nexus Hospitals, who gave a talk on benchmarking and using metrics to understand and grow your practice. He talked about internal and external benchmarking and shared key metrics with delegates.

The closing session was run by professional speaker Rachel Green, director of The Emotional Intelligence Institute and Job Interviews Australia. Her session was entitled, ‘Thrive in Your Practice! How to be Emotionally Resilient in Changing Times’ and it was hilarious; an absolute treat with some great tips for managing those stressful days that we all encounter from time-to-time.

The meeting closed on a high and we look forward to getting together next year in Adelaide to once again share our successes and our challenges, and provide that important collegial support.

*Deb Boyd is chief executive of Auckland Eye, a board member of Health Infomatics NZ (HiNZ) and a member of RANZCO’s Practice Manager Associates committee.