Service capability frameworks are comprehensive guidelines developed for Victoria's health system to support the delivery of optimal care.
The frameworks apply to health service campuses within Victoria’s health system, encompassing a wide range of healthcare providers and facilities.
The frameworks outline the essential elements required for clinical services to function safely and effectively and categorise these services into different levels of capability.
Service capability frameworks:
- describe the clinical services that can be safely delivered by a health service campus, typically against six levels of capability
- provide a common language for staff, health services, and the community about what can be safely delivered at a given campus
- assist the department and health services with planning and service development at local, regional and state-wide levels.
Service capability frameworks are already in place in most states of Australia.
The capability frameworks for Maternity and Newborn services are well established and embedded across Victoria’s health system. Additional capability frameworks are being released for major clinical streams in Victoria's health system in response to recommendations from Targeting zero, the review of hospital safety and quality assurance in Victoria (2016).
Role of service capability frameworks
The role of capability frameworks is to:
- support health services to collaborate to deliver the right care, at the right time to meet the needs of their communities
- support the Department of Health and Safer Care Victoria to ensure that safe care, of the highest quality, is delivered to all Victorians
- describe the supports needed for health services to deliver safe care to the community, as close to home as possible.
Purpose of capability frameworks
Capability frameworks outline the minimum requirements for safe and high-quality care in Victoria and support health services to deliver the right care, at the right time, at the right place to all Victorian communities.
Capability frameworks support the following functions:
- Setting service capability levels and defining the relationships between services.
- Effective health system planning and support future role delineation which will improve quality, safety, and efficiency of services.
- Communicate policy expectations about clinical safety and management of risk.
Capability frameworks should be viewed in conjunction with other key documents, particularly the Victorian Role Delineation Framework, Victorian Health Services Performance Monitoring Framework, the Department of Health Policy and Funding Guidelines and the Safer Care Victoria clinical governance framework(opens in a new window).
Frameworks that are already in place in Victoria and/or are currently being reviewed include:
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