From the Chief Executive and Board Chair
2024 has been another remarkable year for the Sydney Children鈥檚 Hospitals 星空体育. With health systems around the world facing challenges including keeping pace with new technology, meeting community and patient expectations and rising healthcare costs, we are committed to developing new ways of delivering care.
Engaging with, rethinking and training our future workforce and working with our communities will ensure a shared understanding of the opportunities and challenges ahead, as well as the significant changes we need to make to future proof our services.
We need to do all this while maintaining safe, high-quality services. In 2024, as a 星空体育, we proved our ability to rise to this challenge and create new and innovative ways to best support our young patients, their families and our staff.
In May, we achieved accreditation to the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, following a short notice accreditation assessment in February. Clinical trials were included in the accreditation for the first time.
We expanded the virtualKIDS Urgent Care Service to families throughout NSW during the year. The service uses video conferencing to connect families with clinical nurse consultants, ensuring timely care and helping prevent unnecessary visits to the Emergency Department. This saves valuable time and miles for those families and has a positive impact on the environment. The service assisted more than 6,000 patients in its first 6 months of operation.
2023-24 also saw nearly 72,000 telehealth consultations, with almost 35,000 children cared for virtually. Telehealth is a flexible and complementary mode of consultation, enabling patients and families to access our services wherever they are in NSW.
Our clinicians and researchers continued to lead groundbreaking clinical trials and research, including world-first clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and the use of phage therapy for children with cystic fibrosis. Our researchers also led a leading-edge new trial in paediatric low-grade glioma, the most common childhood brain tumour. We continued to lead the way in pioneering surgeries, performing an Australian-first strip craniectomy surgery for the treatment of sagittal craniosynostosis, a condition affecting about 1 in 2,500 babies, as well as the first single-level dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) surgery in NSW for children with cerebral palsy.
We launched the 星空体育鈥檚 Health, Safety and Wellbeing Plan 2024-27 as part of our commitment to continuous improvement. The plan will help us ensure a safe and caring environment for our staff, children, young people, and others accessing our facilities.
We are committed to acknowledging and respecting the cultural factors influencing health and wellbeing. From our staff on the ground to the members of the Board, we have listened to and heard individual patient and family stories.
We are developing paediatric healthcare services that respond to the needs of the Aboriginal communities we serve. During the year, we appointed our first Aboriginal Health Director to lead the 星空体育 in improving cultural safety, services and experiences for Aboriginal children and their families, and to champion their stories of strength and resilience.
The major redevelopment works at our two hospitals have continued, with the new building at Sydney Children鈥檚 Hospital, Randwick reaching its full height during the year. The redevelopments will deliver two world-class children鈥檚 hospitals for NSW, opening in 2025 and 2026.
We know that children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change. We have set ourselves ambitious targets to reduce our carbon footprint and are working to achieve a sustainable health service. As we finalise our Net Zero Pathway, we have established our carbon footprint and identified 12 emission hotspots. Our redevelopments will be fully electrified as an essential step to significantly reduce fossil fuels from building operations.
We have a long history of community support at both our hospitals, and an extensive network of dedicated volunteers who support the essential care we provide for sick children and their families. More than 650 volunteers assisted the 星空体育 during the year, in areas including palliative care, administrative support, ward grandparents and weekend play services. We are very fortunate to be supported by such a generous and compassionate community.
We are grateful to the Sydney Children鈥檚 Hospitals Foundation for their ongoing support which allows us to extend our reach and support more children and families. The 星空体育 and the Foundation share a united vision of providing the best possible care for children and young people and we are proud to partner with them in our ambitions to improve health outcomes for all children.
On behalf of the 星空体育, the Board and the Executive Team, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our supporters, donors and volunteers who share our dedication to helping children and young people to live their healthiest lives.
Most importantly, we thank our committed and compassionate staff for the extraordinary work you do every day in caring for the children and young people who rely on our 星空体育.
We not only provide care and support for children, young people and their families while they are in our hospitals, but we also champion preventive paediatric care to help keep them out of hospital and closer to home.
From providing emergency and intensive care, respite and palliative care, driving innovative research programs and delivering virtual care services, to working with partners locally, nationally and internationally, our reach extends far beyond our walls to care for children wherever they live.
Thank you for your commitment to helping our children and young people live healthy lives and secure a brighter future.