Strengthening Regional Cancer Centres Service Planning Support, Victorian Department of Health

Strengthening Regional Cancer Centres Service Planning Support, Victorian Department of Health

The Victorian Department of Health commissioned all Regional Cancer Centres (RCCs) in Victoria to undertake planning to guide cancer service development, in line with their local population needs and the objectives set out in the Victorian Cancer Plan (2020–2024). RCCs aim to provide care for cancer patients as close to home as possible while working with larger metropolitan services to facilitate access to a comprehensive suite of services and to ensure consistency and quality of care. A specific activity within the Victorian Cancer Plan 2024 was to strengthen the role of RCCs in clinical care, support services, education and research, including cluster-wide access to care closer to home, a focus on underserved groups and the voice of the community, and workforce development for timely access to quality care.

HMA was engaged to provide support to the RCCs in their service planning activity, promote consistency and facilitate collaboration between sites. HMA’s role was as follows:

Provide RCC service planners with support and coaching to ensure consistency of approaches among RCCs, albeit allowing for local differences as required. Key tasks included:

  • Consultation with RCC service planners to understand the cancer care arrangements within each region.
  • Provision of guidance for service planners regarding data requirements and analysis, policy and documentation review, stakeholder engagement, and identifying priorities for future planning. This included virtual and face-to-face capacity building workshops based on adult learning and instructional design principles.
  • Development of tools and templates to support service planners regarding final report expectations, project management, stakeholder engagement and workshop facilitation.
  • Development of a shared repository of information including links to policy document and data sources.
  • Conducting a service planning workshop to facilitate shared learnings between RCCs.

Provide organisational preparedness support to assist RCC leadership teams to assess the organisational preparedness to implement the service plans. This included reflection on service and program structure, resources, stakeholder engagement, organisational capability, management support, risk and benefit realisation. Key tasks included:

  • consultation with RCC leadership team to understand current capabilities and challenges
  • development of tools and templates to support the reflection and assessment
  • facilitation of an RCC leadership workshop to promote the sharing of learnings and enhanced networking between RCCs
  • assistance to prepare organisational preparedness reports to guide implementation of the service plans.

This project commenced in October 2021 and is due for completion in September 2022.