It is a privilege to be part of improving the health and wellbeing of Victorians. It is a significant responsibility. One that requires focus, persistence, and trusted partnerships.
Our Strategic Plan 2023–27 serves as a four-year roadmap for achieving the ambitious vision of making Victorians the healthiest people in the world. This 2024 update summarises progress over the first year of the plan.
At the core of the plan is our unwavering commitment to strengthening our healthcare workforce and building a sustainable health, wellbeing and care system that meets the needs of all Victorians. Providing the right care at the right time in the right place.
This year's update, while reaffirming our future goals, is an opportunity to highlight some of the achievements this past year. In particular, the progress made towards better health equity, including women's and reproductive health. We've led a nation-first Inquiry into Women's Pain, hearing from over 13,000 women and girls about their health and healthcare experiences. Those voices are already shaping tomorrow's healthcare. A nation first public fertility care service has seen the first babies born to women and couples previously unable to afford the expenses of private care. Equity. Access. Care.
Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Locals are making mental health services more accessible, without the need for a referral, and ever more responsive with an embedded lived and living experience workforce. The permanent Medically Safe Injecting Room facility and a statewide pill testing pilot are enhancing community safety and saving lives. Particularly young lives.
We are bringing care closer to home – even in the home – through our Victorian Community Pharmacist Statewide Pilot, our Urgent Care Centres, and our Victorian Virtual Emergency Care. More Victorians are using our Virtual Emergency Care than any other emergency department in the state. These new ways of providing care are making sure we all get the care we need, when we need it, while also reducing pressure on our hospitals' emergency departments. Win, win.
Just some of the advances made this year.
I hope you find this year's update useful and that it gives you a glimpse of the skilled, innovative and dedicated people – the nurses and midwives, physios and psychologists, doctors and so many more – who get up every day to look after us. Because this is what every single Victorian deserves.
Professor Euan Wallace AM
Secretary
Department of Health
Reviewed 29 August 2024