Barbara Crawford farewelled

After 13 years as Waikato DHB’s manager of Quality and Risk, Barbara Crawford was farewelled today (Friday 14 August), and will take up a new role as risk management specialist with the Land Transport Agency in Wellington.

Barbara Crawford is regarded with widespread respect for what she has accomplished and the qualities she has brought to the DHB.

Under Barbara’s watch Waikato District Health Board started taking quality and risk issues seriously and learned to address them in a more rigorous and sustainable way.

 “I’m proud of the quality and risk systems we’ve achieved here at Waikato DHB at a fraction of the cost spent elsewhere in the world,” she says. 

Putting a robust incident reporting process in place has also changed the culture and practice of the health board. “When the new system was introduced in 1997 we were getting only 100 incidents reported per month.  Now that’s up to about 1000 per month.” The increase is not about more incidents taking place, but about staff learning to understand and trust the process, she says.

“Staff are starting to see how we use the information we collect. It drives quality improvement for our processes and patient safety. For example, incident forms highlighted a problem with patient falls, and the result was the introduction of falls risk assessments and falls prevention strategies.”

In 2002, Barbara introduced another key process – robust serious event reviews using root cause analysis. She adapted best practice models from the United States and these have recently been modified to include Australian methods.

Regional and national forums have benefited from Barbara’s knowledge and commitment. In 2002 she organised the first NZ Healthcare Complaints Conference, hosted at Waikato DHB, and played a key role in the development of Waikato DHB’s Best of Health Awards.

Barbara has been a member of several important national working parties and in the past two years was on the national Quality Improvement Committee. She has also presented papers at many conferences and was commissioned by the Ministry of Health to lead the review of Wellington’s maternity services in 2008.

“A highlight for me has been working with highly committed clinical and non-clinical staff within the DHB’s Quality and Risk team, at all levels of the organisation, and at regional and national levels,” Barbara says.

Does she have any thoughts about how quality and risk management could get even better traction at Waikato DHB in the future? Barbara reflects that she has faced many barriers on the path to implementing good systems – some from individuals, some from general attitudes and some from the way the organisation is structured and functions. She believes one important way to overcome these barriers is to focus on leadership and alignment to a clear quality strategy.

“I’ve reviewed many, many quality systems and the message is clear: if quality improvement is going to be effective and built into the way we do business there must be leadership at the top. That means a strategy for quality improvement, and all improvement activities aligned with this strategy,” she says.
Barbara’s contribution to Waikato DHB has been invaluable and of high quality. We wish her all the best for the future.

Date: 14 August 2009