The Alliance has made a submission to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) on the initial draft of the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards (third edition). The Alliance supports the stronger focus on equity, workforce sustainability, culturally safe care, integrated care, digital technologies and continuous improvement, while emphasising that the NSQHS Standards (third edition) must work effectively across diverse rural service settings.
Through our submission we are advocating for:
- Greater recognition of geography, distance, workforce availability and limited service access as safety and quality issues.
- Support for broad and full scope of practice and proportionate implementation in rural health services.
- More equitable access to clinical research, including teletrial, satellite-site and other decentralised models.
- Stronger continuity and coordination of care across services, sectors and jurisdictions.
- Locally relevant measures of safety, quality and patient outcomes for rural communities.
- Reduced duplication in accreditation, including greater use of shared governance, credentialling and regional or network-wide systems.
The submission emphasises that people living in rural Australia should expect the same standard of safe high-quality care as people living in metropolitan areas. Achieving this requires the NSQHS Standards (third edition) to recognise differences in workforce availability, service scale, distance, digital connectivity and access to care, while allowing flexible and proportionate approaches to implementation.