Annual Report 2015-16
Board Chair Report - Dr Alison Edwards
July 2016 marked the end of our first year as Country SA PHN. The year was not without its challenges with a very short run-in to kick-off, combined with a need to continue service-as-usual across the patch we were assuming responsibility for.
We were moving from a service provision focus to a service comissioning approach while trying to continue engagement with our communities and our health service providers. I believe the organisation has done well in these areas notwithstanding a few understandable teething troubles. I will leave Kim Hosking our CEO to cover these achievements in his report.
From a governance perspective we have hastened slowly in the process of building a new Board and establishing our Clinical Council. Our community links from Country North SA Medicare Local were well established in our community cluster organisations as our members and we continue to build on this work finding the best fit for similar bodies across our southern and eastern areas. While we are yet to welcome new members from these areas, we are progressing well towards this goal. We have welcomed onto the Board Dr Peter Rischbieth a GP from Murray Bridge and Ms Kirsten Sargeson, a pharmacist from Berri. The Board is skills based, not representative but we value a broad geographic spread as one of the skills we seek to add as well as a good age, ethnicity and gender mix. We have kept the Board small thus far, understanding the costs involved in each additional Board member, but are looking to bring on additional members with a mix of geographic background [South-East, West Coast, Far North], broader allied health experience, finance or accounting experience as well as being willing to offer training and experience in the role to younger colleagues.