Reform within how the health system is governed is critical to ensuring proper accountability, but needs to be ongoing, the state's peak medical body says.
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On Tuesday Health Minister Sarah Courtney, alongside department secretary Katherine Morgan-Wicks, announced a restructure of the health service aimed at streamlining its executive structure and strengthening local decision-making.
The shakeup will see the standalone role of the Tasmanian Health Service Executive abolished, with the operations executive director in each region to be renamed chief executive hospital north and north-west or south.
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Australian Medical Association Tasmania branch president Professor John Burgess said the announcement would have important consequences for the operations of hospitals.
"We expect that the next level of detail will ensure that the systems are in place to enable hospital teams to deliver much needed services to patients," he said.
"This, in conjunction with the recent budget announcement, should help to improve the delivery of services within our hospitals if there is sufficient devolution of decision-making at the coalface."
It comes after reforms made by former Health Minister Michael Ferguson in 2018 established a governing council separate to the health department, with the health system brought under a single point accountability - the secretary of the department of health.
Speaking to the latest changes, Professor Burgess said the AMA would wait to see whether the reforms would go far enough to provide the "level of autonomy required within hospitals to get on with the job and not be held back by top heavy bureaucracy slowing decision making down and thereby not allowing for efficient and effective responses to be made on the ground to emerging problems".