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