Central Adelaide Local Health Network

Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) is one of the largest public health networks in Australia, with more than 14,000 staff across five main hospitals and a budget of $1.8 billion. CALHN had incurred total budget overruns of $645 million over a five-year period and was forecast to underperform against budget by $274 million in 2019.

KordaMentha was engaged to undertake a diagnostic review, which uncovered a distressed organisation facing systemic financial, operational and cultural issues. The magnitude of the problem facing the South Australian government and community was clear.

In response, KordaMentha developed a three-year organisational and financial recovery plan and we were engaged as State Administrators to implement. The plan was designed to reposition CALHN as a modern, high-functioning network, delivering sustainable care for the community by addressing the key issues of:
•    Finance and performance
•    Service delivery
•    People, industrial relations and workforce optimisation
•    Information, evidence and Insights 

A three-stage recovery plan outlined five strategic objectives for CALHN to:
•    Deliver better patient outcomes.
•    Operate a modern health service.
•    Be a great place to work and learn.
•    Better the leadership of Adelaide’s health.
•    Sustainably allocate resources.

High-performing staff from across CALHN were identified and seconded to each workstream to build engagement and leverage corporate knowledge within CALHN.

The results were outstanding, achieving the outlined objectives:

•    $105 million improvement in first six months
•    11,000 reduction in patient record backlog
•    >60 beds hospital capacity created
•    21% reduction in emergency wait times
•    40 new leadership positions recruited
•    38% reduction in agency spend
•    1,400 staff engaged in clinical organisation design workshops
•    10% improvement in financial performance against National Efficient price
•    120 Emerging Leaders engaged in leadership development program.