Governance In Crisis

Effectiveness of Covid-19 Simulation in Aged Care

Caroline was the newly appointed CEO of a small, standalone home in the Blue Mountains. The home had been sanctioned by the Commonwealth and sitting in the middle of a COVID-19 hot spot.

With an endless river of Government instructions, announcements and demands, the management team and Board needed to devise its own strategy to ensure effective governance whilst navigating an intensive environment . Good governance recognises that the health system is a dynamic adaptive collection of interrelated and interdependent components including people and processes with a common purpose. Achieving and maintaining this purpose is an enormous task even for well run, highly functioning organisations. For us, achieving effective governance oversight for a sanctioned home, in the middle of a pandemic has been quite the journey.

Unlike group aged care homes that can draw upon expert advice and other necessary resources from within, stand-alone homes face additional challenges of debunking what every new state and federal health directive or recommendations mean for their home and can often feel isolated and overwhelmed with this process.

Caroline will present on the “24 Hour Emergency Response Plan” and how a small operator cut through the bureaucracy and information overload to develop a strategy for dealing decisively in catastrophe. She will explain the value of disaster simulation and the applications of these simple principles as we face a volatile and uncertain future.