Annual Report 2024-25: The agency's performance

The Agency’s performance

Per­for­mance at a glance

Key high­lights for 2024 – 25 include:

• Devel­oped a pro­to­type for cal­cu­lat­ing and visu­al­is­ing sys­tem risks relat­ed to com­mu­ni­ty ambu­lance response times.
• Com­plet­ed scop­ing for a cross-sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tive project to reduce read­mis­sion rates for the home­less pop­u­la­tion across South Aus­tralia by inte­gra­tion across hos­pi­tal, pri­ma­ry care, hous­ing and social services.
• Com­plet­ed the Ado­les­cent Tran­si­tion Care Frame­work 2025 – 2029 in part­ner­ship with Per­for­mance and Com­mis­sion­ing, DHW.
• Com­plet­ed an imple­men­ta­tion plan to secure a Fed­er­a­tion Fund­ing Agree­ment, and asso­ci­at­ed fund­ing, to estab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive can­cer net­work in South Australia.
• Devel­oped a statewide mod­el for the use of Spe­cialised Robot­ic Surgery with Prosta­te­c­to­my as the first use-case.
• Com­plet­ed a deci­sion-mak­ing tool and process flow to sup­port SA Health in access to, and deliv­ery of, high­ly spe­cialised ther­a­pies (HST) for eli­gi­ble South Australians.
• Com­menced a Clin­i­cal Reg­istries Roadmap towards achiev­ing an ide­al State with­in five years, includ­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of gov­er­nance struc­tures and respon­si­bil­i­ties, pol­i­cy devel­op­ment and required resourc­ing and investment.
• Designed a mod­el to improve iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and access to qual­i­ty pal­lia­tive care ser­vices and spe­cial­ist clin­i­cians with the SA Vir­tu­al Care Service.
• Com­plet­ed imple­men­ta­tion of ​‘HIRAID’ stan­dard­ised emer­gency nurs­ing assess­ment frame­work across all SA Health Emer­gency Depart­ments (EDs).
• Sup­port­ed the Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work (CAL­HN) to pilot a com­po­nent of the opti­mal sys­tem of care for low back pain, pro­vid­ing alter­nate path­ways to emer­gency depart­ment treatment.
• Led the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the Oper­at­ing Room Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (ORMIS) surgery can­cel­la­tion codes.
• Held two sys­tem-lev­el work­shops of the HCEC Clin­i­cal Coun­cil, the peak clin­i­cal body respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing clin­i­cal engage­ment into statewide and strate­gic deci­sions that affect clin­i­cal care. Top­ics includ­ed the Future of Clin­i­cal Reg­istries and the Role of Clin­i­cal Lead­er­ship in Work­force Sustainability.

Agency spe­cif­ic objec­tives and performance

Oth­er key activ­i­ties and highlights

Dur­ing 2024 – 25, the CEIH aligned its projects to work streams to help theme and com­mu­ni­cate our achieve­ments in line with agency objectives:

Lead­er­ship and capability:

• Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case (IIS): Share, con­nect and explore why improve­ments were need­ed, how the change occurred, and what impacts they had in a live online for­mat. Pre­sen­ta­tions are pub­lished through the CEIH’s dig­i­tal chan­nels to enable acces­si­bil­i­ty for a broad audi­ence. In 2024 – 25, two IIS series were delivered:
  • Series 14: A Year in Review was a one ses­sion show­case which attract­ed 172 reg­is­tra­tions and 130 attendees.
  • Series 15: Adopt­ing Dig­i­tal and Data-based Tech­nolo­gies in Health Care which ran 4 ses­sions over the series and attract­ed 498 reg­is­tra­tions and 281 attendees.

The IIS attracts peo­ple hold­ing a range of posi­tion types from a wide demo­graph­ic of organ­i­sa­tions across the health sec­tor. The year-on-year growth in reg­is­tra­tion and attendee data in addi­tion to the pos­i­tive feed­back col­lat­ed via polling reflects con­tin­ued grow­ing inter­est in the IIS.

• Infor­mat­ics: Fol­low­ing on from pre­vi­ous years, and based on feed­back, the CEIH has con­tin­ued to spon­sor Cer­ti­fied Health Infor­mati­cian Accred­i­ta­tion (CHIA) places across the health sec­tor in 2024 – 25.

Tools and resources:

The CEIH has con­tin­ued to devel­op and pro­mote tools and resources to sup­port capa­bil­i­ty build­ing across the health system.

As of 30 June 2025, CEIH resources and tools avail­able via our web­site included:

• Effec­tive part­ner­ships, tools and tem­plates includ­ing the resource doc­u­ment: ​‘Part­ner­ships Approach: Build­ing qual­i­ty part­ner­ships in the health­care sec­tor.’
• Build­ing Work­place Well­be­ing Guide and Dis­cus­sion Paper plus tools and resources.
• Cul­ture of Inno­va­tion Dis­cus­sion Paper and Guide to pro­vide an evi­dence base and prac­ti­cal assis­tance to those seek­ing to fos­ter innovation.
• Evi­dence based inter­ac­tive Inno­va­tion Mod­el, includ­ing resources and tem­plates, designed to guide the inno­va­tion journey.
• ‘How to Pitch’ Guide pub­lished to sup­port inno­va­tors to devel­op impact­ful proposals.
• ‘Hackathon’ Toolk­it pub­lished to pro­vide a step-wise approach to using an inno­v­a­tive method­ol­o­gy for ideat­ing and collaborating
• Project Life­cy­cle mod­el with resources, tools and templates.
• Data visu­al­i­sa­tion Style and Best Prac­tice Guide.

Part­ner­ships:

The CEIH Part­ner­ships Strat­e­gy has con­tin­ued to be pro­mot­ed and used across CEIH, by our part­ners and broad­er stake­hold­ers. The CEIH is com­mit­ted to build­ing capa­bil­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships that enable deliv­ery of inno­v­a­tive and excep­tion­al out­comes in address­ing com­plex prob­lems faced by the health­care sec­tor. The CEIH is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing a strong and sus­tain­able health­care part­ner­ship ecosys­tem in SA by:

• Lead­ing by exam­ple in build­ing qual­i­ty CEIH partnerships.
• Build­ing part­ner­ship capa­bil­i­ty in the health­care sector.
• Sup­port­ing sys­tem-lev­el change though ini­tial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of enablers and bar­ri­ers to part­ner­ships in healthcare.

For­malised agency-wide part­ner­ships for health­care improve­ments have been devel­oped and main­tained with:

• SA Vir­tu­al Care Service
• Health Trans­la­tion SA (HTSA)
• North­ern Ade­laide Well­be­ing Partnership
• Dig­i­tal Health SA
• Car­ing Futures Insti­tute (CFI)
• Can­cer Australia
• Women’s and Chil­dren’s Health Net­work (WCHN)

Con­sumer engagement:

The CEIH con­tin­ues to demon­strate its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the con­sumer voice by using a range of engage­ment strate­gies including:

• Con­sumer rep­re­sen­ta­tion across the SCNs and oth­er key CEIH projects, includ­ing co-lead­ing key work­ing groups.
• Youth Advi­so­ry Group includ­ing young peo­ple with lived expe­ri­ence of healthcare.
• Ongo­ing sup­port to and devel­op­ment of the CEIH Com­mu­ni­ty of Con­sumers to cre­ate a safe envi­ron­ment to learn and share.
• Capa­bil­i­ty train­ing for con­sumer representatives.
• Sup­port­ing the LHN Con­sumer Engage­ment Pro­fes­sion­als Com­mu­ni­ty of Practice.

Strength­en­ing work­place wellbeing:

The CEIH con­tin­ues its com­mit­ment to ensur­ing the health sys­tem is designed to pri­ori­tise, pro­tect, and pro­mote the health, safe­ty, and well­be­ing of the health­care work­force to enable the deliv­ery of effi­cient, effec­tive and high- qual­i­ty patient care. To sup­port cre­at­ing a cul­ture of work­place well­be­ing across SA Health, the CEIH has deliv­ered the fol­low­ing in 2024 – 25:

• Pro­vid­ed con­tin­ued lead­er­ship, sec­re­tari­at, and sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise for the health­care work­force well­be­ing sub-com­mit­tee of HCEC focus­ing on dri­ving sys­tem-lev­el action.
• Sup­port­ed the con­tin­ued deliv­ery and mon­i­tor­ing of actions from the ​‘Advanc­ing health­care work­force well­be­ing across SA Health’ Plan for sys­tem-lev­el col­lab­o­ra­tive action.
• Co-led the devel­op­ment and endorse­ment of a set of best prac­tice met­rics and account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms to mea­sure, mon­i­tor and report on work­place well­be­ing across SA Health.
• Led the devel­op­ment of a sys­tem-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tions plan to sup­port evi­dence-informed and effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and engage­ment to dri­ve pos­i­tive work­place well­be­ing out­comes across the system.
• Part­nered with WCHN to deliv­er a com­pre­hen­sive work­place well­be­ing research project across two of its divi­sions, incor­po­rat­ing the CEIH work­place well­be­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al guide and frame­work into prac­tice by iden­ti­fy­ing the work-relat­ed fac­tors impact­ing work­er well­be­ing and engag­ing staff to redesign work through a co-design methodology.
• Pre­sen­ta­tions on pri­ori­tis­ing work­place well­be­ing, work­place cul­ture and the design of work at the Aus­tralian Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Fed­er­a­tion SA branch Work­place Cul­ture and Safe­ty Workshop.
• Host­ed a Psy­choso­cial Safe­ty Dis­cus­sion Pan­el at the SA Health Safe Work Month Con­fer­ence Day.
• Pro­vid­ed sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise and con­sul­tan­cy to a num­ber of health ser­vices and clin­i­cal units local­ly and nation­al­ly to build lead­er­ship capa­bil­i­ty and improve work­place cul­ture and good work design.

Sup­port­ing research and innovation:

In addi­tion to oth­er relat­ed research and inno­va­tion sup­port activ­i­ties list­ed through­out this report, the CEIH has also supported:

• Col­lab­o­ra­tion with HTSA to sup­port and dri­ve the inte­gra­tion of research trans­la­tion across the health­care system.
• Deliv­ery of the MRFF pro­gram of work ​‘SA Acute Care Learn­ing Health Sys­tem Project,’ tar­get­ed at reduc­ing ED con­ges­tion. The CEIH is heav­i­ly involved in deliv­ery of this pro­gram, including:
  • Deliv­ery of the RAPIDx Pre-hos­pi­tal tri­al (see ear­li­er in report).
  • Explor­ing unwar­rant­ed vari­a­tion in gen­er­al med­i­cine. The CEIH has finalised engage­ment with stake­hold­ers from NAL­HN, CAL­HN and South­ern Ade­laide Local Health Net­work (SAL­HN) to inves­ti­gate clin­i­cal vari­a­tion in gen­er­al med­i­cine through a clin­i­cian led approach iden­ti­fy­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port tools util­is­ing machine learn­ing. The project has proved suc­cess­ful in its engage­ment, sur­fac­ing more than 90 top­ics for analy­sis. Many have been explored and closed through hand-over to the clin­i­cians as the project con­tin­ues its sec­ond phase, where spe­cif­ic machine learn­ing mod­el oppor­tu­ni­ties will be ful­ly explored and tested.
  • Sup­port­ing the ​‘Opti­mis­ing old­er People’s Tran­si­tion from acute care into res­i­den­tial aged care through Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Assess­ment and Liai­son’ (OPTI­MAL) research tri­al which is an enhanced care inter­ven­tion for old­er per­sons mak­ing a first-time tran­si­tion into per­ma­nent res­i­den­tial aged care from hos­pi­tal. CEIH is a part­ner in this project which has been imple­ment­ed across CAL­HN and SAL­HN, with NAL­HN to fol­low in August 2025. CEIH have con­tributed to the project through the devel­op­ment and sup­port of an inter­ac­tive dash­board that iden­ti­fies risk strate­gies and mon­i­tors study par­tic­i­pants using elec­tron­ic med­ical record data.
  • Coor­di­nat­ing deliv­ery of and pro­vid­ing clin­i­cal infor­mat­ics resources to the Learn­ing Health Sys­tem Plat­form Project, which aims to address data archi­tec­ture, infra­struc­ture, and devel­op­ing the ongo­ing col­lat­er­al for future ana­lyt­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence projects.

• Eval­u­at­ing, through the Clin­i­cal Genomics SCN, the costs and ben­e­fits of mod­els of care for whole genome sequenc­ing that inte­grates sequenc­ing ear­ly in the diag­nos­tic path­way to improve diag­no­sis, reduce repeat test­ing, and sup­port long-term sys­tem efficiencies.
• Part­nered with HTSA on a suc­cess­ful Nation­al Health and Med­ical Research Coun­cil fund­ing appli­ca­tion, work­ing towards accel­er­at­ing and ampli­fy­ing the trans­la­tion of research address­ing pri­or­i­ty health ser­vice issues in South Aus­tralia. This includes the devel­op­ment of a state-wide mod­el to accel­er­ate the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, devel­op­ment, scal­ing and embed­ding of high-val­ue research trans­la­tion ini­tia­tives into rou­tine care in South Australia.
• Sup­port­ed 13 ini­tia­tives, either through pro­vid­ing let­ters of sup­port or part­ner­ing on fund­ing appli­ca­tions, all of which align strong­ly with our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties and con­tribute to strength­en­ing research trans­la­tion and health sys­tem research capacity.
• Sup­port­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of 11 research out­puts, rep­re­sent­ing a 450% increase from the pre­vi­ous year, fur­ther strength­en­ing research trans­la­tion and impact.
• Pro­vid­ing co-inves­ti­ga­tion in the ​‘Lead­ing EAST’ work­place well­be­ing research project to iden­ti­fy and co-design solu­tions to the work-relat­ed fac­tors impact­ing work­place well­be­ing at WCHN.

Oth­er highlights

The eight SCNs and their sub-com­mit­tees and work­ing groups rep­re­sent sig­nif­i­cant reach across the health sec­tor in South Aus­tralia, with diverse mem­ber­ship, comprising:

• 53 SA Health Med­ical Officers
• 12 Gen­er­al Practitioners
• 15 Con­sumer and Car­er representatives
• 4 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Com­mu­ni­ty and Non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions (NGOs)
• 20 Researchers
• 27 Nurs­es
• 18 Allied Health Clinicians
• 20 Health Administrators/​Managers
• 3 SA Ambu­lance Ser­vice (SAAS) representative.

The Inno­va­tion Team has pro­vid­ed sup­port to more than 20 inno­va­tors dur­ing the past 12 months, across a range of tech­nolo­gies includ­ing holo­grams, non- touch screens, sens­ing devices, dig­i­tal appli­ca­tions, med­ical devices and clin­i­cal equip­ment. Using the Inno­va­tion Mod­el as a frame­work for dis­cus­sions, the concierge ser­vice sup­ports inno­va­tors to:

• Artic­u­late the val­ue of the inno­va­tion to the system
• Under­stand the entire inno­va­tion jour­ney from idea to imple­ment­ed solution
• Iden­ti­fy and con­nect with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers in the sec­tor and system

LIINC+ Pro­gram — Lead­ing Inno­va­tion Inter­face Connections

The LIINC+ pro­gram is advanc­ing health­care inte­gra­tion across South Aus­tralia through dig­i­tal inno­va­tion and strate­gic part­ner­ships. Key ini­tia­tives include remote mon­i­tor­ing for region­al patients, improved dis­charge com­mu­ni­ca­tion with aged care facil­i­ties, AI-dri­ven research into endometrio­sis diag­no­sis, and data-shar­ing projects that sup­port gen­er­al prac­tice deci­sion- making.

A flag­ship pilot, Region­al Care Con­nect, is reduc­ing avoid­able hos­pi­tal read­mis­sions through vir­tu­al health coach­ing and data ana­lyt­ics. Ear­ly results show few­er emer­gency vis­its and reduced clin­i­cian workload.

Per­son­alised care in cancer

• Devel­oped a statewide, stan­dard­ised and stream­lined path­way for main­stream­ing of germline genet­ic test­ing for can­cer treat­ment. The work was led by the Can­cer SCN and designed by a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary work­ing group across the health care sys­tem includ­ing consumers.
• Informed by a cur­rent state analy­sis, the frame­work enables con­sis­tent and stan­dard­ised guide­lines and path­ways for can­cer patients to under­go effi­cient treat­ment focused germline genet­ic testing.
• Main­stream genet­ic test­ing packs and edu­ca­tion was pro­vid­ed to over 300 clin­i­cians. An addi­tion­al con­sumer focussed video was devel­oped in 2024. Eval­u­a­tion iden­ti­fied a sig­nif­i­cant increase in BRCA1/2 tests ordered through the main­stream path­way (14% pre to 25% post).
• Com­ple­tion of the project was marked by pub­li­ca­tion in the Asia-Pacif­ic Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal Oncol­o­gy, pre­sent­ing evi­dence to sup­port improved access, clin­i­cian and patient engage­ment, and the devel­op­ment of tai­lored imple­men­ta­tion strategies.

Can­cer nav­i­ga­tion frame­work and action plan:

• The CEIH Can­cer SCN part­nered with CFI on the ​‘Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tion Project,’ to devel­op an evi­dence based South Aus­tralian can­cer nav­i­ga­tion frame­work and action plan, which aligns with the Aus­tralian Can­cer Plan and Draft South Aus­tralian Can­cer Plan 2024 – 2028. The frame­work aims to address bar­ri­ers and facil­i­tate time­ly access to can­cer care ser­vices, diag­no­sis, treat­ments, and care.
• The frame­work and action plan were informed by a high-qual­i­ty sys­tem­at­ic review of the lit­er­a­ture in con­sul­ta­tion with over 200 stake­hold­ers, includ­ing con­sumers, care­givers, clin­i­cians, researchers, pol­i­cy mak­ers, and var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties across sec­tors and can­cer types.
• The Can­cer Nav­i­ga­tion frame­work and action plan has now been pub­lished, along with a sup­port­ing jour­nal arti­cle, and a coor­di­nat­ed imple­men­ta­tion pro­gram has been embed­ded with­in SAC­CaN to dri­ve statewide improve­ments in can­cer care.

Cor­po­rate per­for­mance summary

Employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty programs

Agency per­for­mance man­age­ment and devel­op­ment systems

Work health and safe­ty and return to work programs

*num­ber of claimants assessed dur­ing the report­ing peri­od as hav­ing a whole per­son impair­ment meet­ing the rel­e­vant thresh­old under the Return to Work Act 2014 (Part 2 Divi­sion 5)

**before third par­ty recovery

Data for pre­vi­ous years is avail­able at: Data SA web­site.

Exec­u­tive employ­ment in the agency

Data for pre­vi­ous years is avail­able at: Data SA website

The Office of the Com­mis­sion­er for Pub­lic Sec­tor Employ­ment has a work­force infor­ma­tion page that pro­vides fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the break­down of exec­u­tive gen­der, salary and tenure by agency.

Down­load Annu­al Report (1MB, PDF)