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Victoria has made some progress in improving its clinical governance, but doesn't have a fully functioning statewide incident management system,Ìýaccording to the latest Ìý²¹³Ü»å¾±³Ù.

In 2016, the Victorian Government commissioned the , following a cluster of baby deaths at . The report found that the then Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) was not effectively leading and overseeing quality and safety across the health system and recommended VAGO to follow up on the Department's progress in improving clinical governance.

In February this year, DHHS was split into the Department of Health (DH)Ìýand the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.

The recent VAGO audit looked at how DH —Ìýincluding Safer Care Victoria (SCV) and the Victorian Agency for Health Information (VAHI) — managed quality andÌýsafety risks across the health system and examined how it produces and uses information to identify and reduce risks.

TheÌýAuditor-General's Office found that the DepartmentÌýhad made some clinical government improvements and its risk management approach no longer maskedÌýpoor quality and safety performance at public health services.

SCV also worked with health services to improve sentinel event reporting, but the Department's ability to reasonably assure Victorians of the health system’s quality and safety was still found to be limited due to the following reasons:

• It cannot ensure that health services are operating within safe scopes of clinical practice.
• It cannot regularly and easily detect trends and risks across the system.
• Victoria still does not have a fully functioning statewide incident management system.
• VAHI, DH's specialist analytics and reporting unit, is working to improve its reporting but can still do much more to consistently provide timely, meaningful and actionable insights that highlight risks and improvement opportunities.
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The Auditor-General’s office has made 18 recommendations with an aim to improve the Department’s systems and process for managing and detecting quality and safety risks across the health system. The Department has accepted all recommendations.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/tashatuvango