Department of Health

Award categories

The Victorian Public Healthcare Awards categories reflect our state's healthcare priorities, and the sector's ability to drive change and improve health outcomes.

The 2022 Victorian Public Healthcare Awards have concluded

Thank you to everyone who participated in the awards and congratulations to our 2022 winners and finalists.

Join our mailing list to receive updates on the 2023 awardsExternal Link .

The Victorian Public Healthcare Awards recognise leadership and excellence in the provision of publicly funded healthcare in response to established and emerging community needs.

The award categories reflect the Victorian Government's healthcare priorities and focus on the sector's ability to drive change and improve health outcomes for all Victorians.

We are also celebrating our health volunteers as part of this year's awards.

This year, the Victorian Public Healthcare Awards recognise achievements in 20 categories across three types of awards:

General Awards

  • This award focuses on innovation and achievements in clinical research, which improve the patient experience and outcomes. This includes work through the practical application of clinician-led research.

    Download the criteria

  • This award recognises excellence in integrating healthcare for patients with chronic and complex conditions, which could include integrating care within an organisation or across a broader range of providers, including social care supports.

    It is looking to identify initiatives or approaches that arrange services around the needs of the patients and provide earlier and more connected support to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes as well as patients' experiences of their care.

    Download the criteria

  • Victoria is Australia's most culturally diverse state, with almost one quarter of our population born overseas. Victorians come from over 230 countries, speak over 200 languages and follow more than 120 different faiths.

    This award focuses on health services and health professionals who successfully deliver culturally responsive services that meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse Victorians, including refugees, people seeking asylum and other at-risk temporary migrants.

    Download the criteria

  • A positive culture places the system, organisations and individuals in a better place to provide effective and efficient patient care, maintain wellbeing and solve complex issues.

    This award focuses on improving the health and safety of staff through occupational health and safety improvement initiatives to address areas of high risk, in particular, on reducing occupational violence and aggression, building a safe and respectful organisational culture and preventing and responding to bullying and harassment.

    Areas of particular focus include: emergency departments, mental health services, alcohol and other drug services, workforce innovation or reform, preventative initiatives.

    Download the criteria

  • This award showcases inspiring initiatives delivered by Victorian health services that have targeted safer care and resulted in better patient outcomes. From finding an innovative way to solve a local or system-wide challenge, to streamlining processes and procedures to enhance patient experience or outcomes – we want you to share the great work being done behind the scenes by dedicated health professionals to continuously improve healthcare quality and safety.

    Download the criteria

  • This award recognises that better healthcare outcomes happen when consumers and health services work together. It celebrates the work of health service teams in co-designing initiatives with consumers and delivering compassionate person-centred care.

    We want to hear about what healthcare providers have done to make a significant difference by acting on patient needs, values and preferences, and how they have worked with consumers reflecting the domains of Victoria’s Partnering in healthcare framework.

    Download the criteria

  • Health services have a leading role in delivering health and wellbeing for all Victorians.

    This award recognises innovation, excellence and quality where health services work with partners to drive a stronger focus on prevention and early intervention to improve the health of not only its patients and staff but also that of the wider community. The prevention initiatives will demonstrate collective approaches that contribute to population wide health and wellbeing outcomes that address the multiple risk factors for poorer health outcomes.

    Download the criteria

  • Being an inclusive service provider significantly improves the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ Victorians. The award recognises individuals or organisations that have taken initiatives to overcome barriers to LGBTIQ+ inclusive healthcare and the progress made in their own journey to be more LGBTIQ+ inclusive.

    Download the criteria

  • This award focuses on embedding a whole of hospital response for responding to family violence via systemic change, including processes and systems in healthcare services, creating awareness of family violence, building skills in sensitive inquiry, and developing partnerships with specialist family violence providers.

    This award category is only open to services that are currently implementing the Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence initiative. This initiative supports services to meet the requirements of the Child and Family Violence Information Sharing Schemes and the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM).

    Download the criteria

  • This award celebrates Victoria's aged care sector that supports programs and services to meet the needs of the increasing number of older Victorians.

    This includes:

    • responding to the changing demographic profile of Victoria, understanding its diversity impacts and maximising the opportunities of an ageing population
    • supporting older Victorians' ability to age well across three main areas of focus: optimising health and wellbeing at all life stages, addressing disadvantage and improving social participation
    • improving access and/or quality of service provision for our diverse older population.

    Download the criteria

  • This award recognises achievements, excellence and innovation in mental health service delivery with a focus on services that advance the Royal Commission’s vision for a compassionate mental health system that embeds lived experience leadership and provides holistic treatment, care and support for all Victorians.

    Download the criteria

  • Women and girls make up just over half of Victoria’s population. While women experience many healthcare challenges that are similar to men, they differ in disease patterns, in risk factors, and in the services that women need and want.

    Whilst Victorian women are living longer, they are experiencing more chronic illness and more years living with a disability. Economic, social, and cultural disadvantage can worsen women’s health. Women from disadvantaged groups tend to live shorter and less healthy lives. Other drivers of ill health are when women are victims of violence, discrimination, or disadvantage, and when they have insufficient income. For all these reasons, women’s health needs differ as their circumstances change, and across their lifecycle. Health promotion, disease prevention and early intervention specific to women can bring about substantial changes and improvements in health outcomes.

    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on priority populations including women, and a concerted effort will be required to reduce structural inequities to mitigate ongoing health impacts of the pandemic.

    This award will focus on initiatives that improve the health and well-being of Victorian women. Of particular focus will be health promotion, disease prevention and early intervention initiatives specific to women, maternity services, sexual and reproductive health.

    Download the criteria

  • Many Aboriginal people in Victoria enjoy good health and wellbeing with cultural connections that keep their families and communities healthy and strong. Yet there is increasing demand for high quality, accessible services across Victoria to Close the Gap in health and wellbeing outcomes.

    The Victorian Government is committed to advancing Aboriginal self-determination. Aboriginal peoples know and understand what their communities need. Aboriginal health workers continue to meet the needs of their local Aboriginal families and communities, with a proven track record of providing strengths-based, culturally safe and effective services to their clients. Their extensive cultural knowledge and local expertise contributes to this success, yet they must be empowered and resourced to deliver health services that align with the needs of their local Aboriginal communities.

    There are many lessons for the health services sector about delivering culturally safe, locally designed and innovative service responses so that Aboriginal people have greater choice when accessing the health services, they need. This award recognises innovation in health service delivery that is culturally responsive, promotes inclusion, advances Aboriginal self-determination and, above all, delivers improved health outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians.

    Download the criteria

  • This award recognises organisations, teams and individuals making extraordinary contributions to improving the health and wellbeing outcomes of Victoria’s parents, babies, children, and young people through the fields of prevention, health promotion, delivery of health care and research.

    Download the criteria

Premier's Health Service of the Year Awards

The Premier's Health Service of the Year Awards are Victoria's most prestigious accolade to which a health service can aspire. These awards recognise leadership and excellence in the provision of publicly funded healthcare for the Victorian community.

The Premier's Health Service of the Year Award entries are assessed against six assessment criteria that represent the strategic ways in which excellent healthcare is delivered. They have their own set of criteria by which winners will be judged.

Volunteer Awards

This year, we are celebrating our health volunteers as part of the Victorian Public Healthcare Awards.

This will give more prominence to how we recognise our volunteers and show that they are not separate to our healthcare sector, but an essential part of how we care for Victorians.

The Volunteer Awards have their own set of criteria by which winners will be judged. This provides a broader scope, allowing nominations for any kind of volunteer contribution.

Finalists for this category will be invited to attend the Awards Gala Night.

  • 19. Health Volunteer/Team of the Year

    This is a new Volunteers Awards category being introduced this year.

    20. Health Volunteer Honour Roll

    This award recognises and celebrates volunteers with 50 or more years of service. It is a traditional category from the Volunteer Awards.

    Download the entry requirements and criteria

Reviewed 06 December 2022

Health.vic

Contact details

Victorian Public Healthcare Awards Awards Secretariat

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