A year in review: The 2023-24 WA Country Health Service Annual Report

No two days are ever the same in country healthcare – let alone 365 of them.

This financial year, we delivered healthcare to almost 600,000 people across 2.55 million square kilometres.

We attended to nearly half a million emergency department presentations and performed nearly 33,000 elective and lifesaving surgeries. Our staff also supported the arrival of more than 4,100 new country babies and undertook thousands of outpatient services.

Throughout the year, we welcomed hundreds of highly qualified professionals, with a record number of nurses and midwives, medical interns and intern pharmacists joining the organisation. In the last six months of 2023-24, we’ve welcomed almost 300 medical staff and hundreds of nurses.

We continued to do all we can to bolster our clinical workforce and increased efforts to “grow our own” with our first cohort of newly qualified midwives under the Paid Student Midwifery Model Pilot now caring for mothers and babies right across country WA.

This year, we continued to expand our virtual care capability within our Command Centre – adding Virtual Pharmacy Support Services to provide medication advice, patient counselling and safeguard medication use across country WA.

In June we broke ground on main works for the $166 million Geraldton Health Campus redevelopment as well as advancing key infrastructure projects including the Bunbury Regional Hospital redevelopment – at $451 million, it’s set to be the biggest ever undertaken in country WA.

WA Country Health Service Chief Executive Jeff Moffet marked the record-breaking year by crediting staff.

“Reflecting on the past 12 months, I’m pleased with what we have achieved.

“More than 12,000 people work across our business with a shared commitment of supporting the health and wellbeing of those living in the furthest corners of our State.

“Providing healthcare in the context of large distances and small communities isn’t without challenges, but time and again country healthcare workers step up to ensure people in the bush are well taken care of.”

You can read the 2023-24 annual report here.