SSWAHS and its 2011 New Year resolutions!

Socrates stumbled across these two New Year resolutions that SSWAHS Executive have decided to make at their final meeting of 2010.

SSWAHS will resolve to improve its complaints handling procedures.

• SSWAHS will not wait until the complainant dies before they respond to their complaint, or
• If death does not intervene early enough, SSWAHS will not ignore responding to a complainant for more than 12 months (in the earnest hope that the complainant will die in the interim), and/or
• SSWAHS will ensure that even the most visually impaired will be able to see the transparency with which the organisation deals with complaints, and
• SSWAHS will ensure that someone in their organisation dealing with complaints actually speaks with the complainant during the investigation process to ensure the accuracy and clarification of their complaint, and
• SSWAHS will follow their own protocols from NSW Health in dealing with serious complaints made against their staff.

SSWAHS Executive will ensure that they remember the presence of the Bowral Health Services.

• SSWAH Executive will be come more aware of the southern-most dot on their jurisdiction, namely, the location of Bowral and the Southern Highlands, and
• SSWAHS will begin to use the "Liverpool to Bowral" tagline after they have provided their Executive level staff with maps of the Southern Highlands and clear driving directions to Bowral (some of the less intelligent and visually impaired among the Executive have been given tuition on reading the very large RTA signs indicating where to leave the F5 motorway), and
• SSWAHS Executive will continue to remind themselves when the gravy (money) train comes to SSWAHS, that Bowral and the Southern Highlands needs a new hospital to cater for the enlarging, and aging, population within the region, and
• SSWAHS Executive will improve the hospital and community health services rather than run them to extinction, and
• SSWAHS Executive will remember that if they can't take the time to visit their health services in the Southern Highlands for which they have a responsibility, it's equally problematic for the aged, the ill and the infirm in the Southern Highlands to have to make the trip north to Campbelltown or Liverpool for the services they say we, in the Highlands, need. If we need them, perhaps we should be provided them, - locally, and
• SSWAHS Executive will remember that besides being their client/consumers, the people of the Southern Highlands are also voters (and the natives are restless).

Yes, it is a bit of fun. Socrates's poke in the eye of the SSWAHS Executive as they begin their backslapping for their survival of another 12 months! Who knows what will happen with the proposed Local Health Networks, and where exactly will the Bowral Health Services be fitting into the "big picture" of the re-branded SSWAHS in the New Year. One thing is more certain in 2011 - there will be a change of State government in March! Hopefully that change will see a shakeup in the current moribund SSWAHS Executive in respect of what it has done to, but not provided for, the Bowral Health Services and the people of the NSW Southern Highlands.

January 1st is the start of a new decade. Hopefully it will also be the start of a new deal for the people of the Southern Highlands.