Review of Shared Facilities Opportunities in Western Sydney

The Children's Hospital at Westmead and Sydney West Area Health Service are working together to identify potential synergies and savings in back office functions, with the objective of reinvesting savings into their priority funding programs.

The Children's Hospital at Westmead is one of Australia's leading hospitals and is a stand-alone health service within the geographical boundaries of Sydney West Area Health Service. Due to the close physical proximity of these services, a logical process is to review duplicate corporate services, such as finance, security, childcare, engineering, information services, transport, mail services, human resources, maintenance, planning and procurement, with a view to making savings through shared administration and running costs.

This review, to be undertaken by Ernst & Young, will be overseen by a Joint Steering Committee, which includes the Chief Executive of The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Dr Antonio Penna, and the Chief Executive of Sydney West Area Health Service,, Professor Steven Boyages.

Staff and unions will be consulted throughout the process and will have opportunities to provide input to the review.

Chief Executive of The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Dr Antonio Penna, said, "The iconic status of The Children's Hospital at Westmead and Sydney West Area Health Service's pivotal role in providing world's best public health services to the population hub of Sydney are strongly recognised by NSW Health and will be reflected in this review."

"Rather than being about merging, this review is about our incredibly important organisations working together, sharing back office resources, and ploughing the savings back into our respective budgets to boost frontline care."

"NSW Health has a firm commitment to the community to manage taxpayer-funded budgets as efficiently as possible and to direct money to where it's needed most - delivering quality health care to patients. We stand by this commitment to the community at all times and this review is a pivotal part of this obligation", Dr Penna said.

Over the next few weeks, Ernst & Young will collect data and feedback from The Children's Hospital at Westmead and Sydney West Area Health Service, and will undertake their analysis of the efficiency of current operations.  It is envisaged that opportunities to share resources will be identified and costed by late February and an implementation plan will be put to the Joint Steering Committee in March.

For further information please contact the Public Relations Department of The Children's Hospital at Westmead by phoning (02) 9845 3364.

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