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ACHS Gold Medal honour for Toowong Private CEO

Thursday 25th November, 2021

The Australian Council on Healthcare Standards has awarded its prestigious ACHS Gold Medal 2021 to Toowong Private Hospital CEO Christine Gee.

The award recognises an individual's outstanding contribution to the promotion of quality and safety in Australian health services.

Ms Gee said she was "absolutely overwhelmed" when she was told she was being presented with this year's medal, following in the footsteps of Australia's former Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy, the 2020 winner.

"I've been in health for a long time, and the ACHS is so well respected – to be awarded that medal, with the history of it, really, I was just overwhelmed," she said.

"To be awarded this after Professor Brendan Murphy, I mean ... seriously!"

Ms Gee said she was not concerned about writing an acceptance speech, until she found out the ACHS Awards Ceremony – held on Thursday 25 November 2021 – would be a virtual event.

"I'm fine standing up in a room in front of people, but the thought of filming something – I won't tell you how many takes it took," she said, laughing.

"But overall, it was nice be able to really reflect on what this award means and just acknowledging and thanking everyone I could think of."

ACHS President, Professor Len Notaras, said Ms Gee was recognised as a leader for her strong advocacy on quality improvement across a range of standards-setting committees and forums.

"Christine has not only had a direct impact in quality and safety in her own hospital, she has also committed time, energy and her considerable leadership skills in the promotion of safety and quality in healthcare at a national level, over a sustained period of time," he said.

As well as being CEO of Brisbane's Toowong Private Hospital for 25 years, Ms Gee is also a member of the Australian Council on Safety and Quality in Healthcare (forerunner to the Australian Commission on Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ACSQHC) and has been a board member of the ACSQHC since its inception; she is the Chair of its Private Hospital Sector Committee, Chair of itsMental Health Advisory Group and Co-Chair of the Patient Safety Reporting Group.

She is the Chair of the Medical Board of Australia's National Special Issues Committee that is leading work in transforming the regulatory management of matters involving sexual boundary violations and issue of family violence, and also a board member of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Ms Gee has had a number of leadership roles in the Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) and remains an active member of its board and council, chairing a number of taskforces.

"The past 20 months in healthcare have been challenging, positive in some ways and of course negative in some ways too," she said.

"So to have to sit down and think about your job, all that you do and why you do it, to acknowledge what a great honour this is, was really nice.

"I don't think we get enough time to reflect. Even pulling out some of the most significant parts of my work, it really made me take stock. And even with all of the added difficulties of the pandemic, it has been an amazing two years."

Ms Gee said she particularly enjoyed working with APHA, as the organisation had "a strong commitment to ensuring Australia's balanced healthcare system remains balanced".

"I love the work I do with the APHA, they're so important in shining a light on the great balanced healthcare system we have, and most importantly in highlighting the significant contribution of private hospitals to the provision of healthcare in Australia, and ensuring that the balance is maintained," she said.

"And to have public and private sectors working together during the pandemic has been one of the great things. Those partnerships are very important."

In recent times, Ms Gee has focused her work on becoming an advocate of public reporting.

"Patients have the fundamental right to get meaningful patient safety information, and for us to ensure we're making evidence-based decisions, whether that's in a clinical area, or in service delivery," she said.

"It is incumbent on all of us who work in healthcare to do the best we possibly can for the patients who depend on us. Working together we can achieve so much more for so many more."

One of Ms Gee's great passions has been mental health care and the delivery of services to meet the individual needs of patients, consumers and carers. She said the opportunities she has had working with those at the forefront of mental health services and lived experience across Australia had been both a highlight and profoundly rewarding.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted the importance of mental health care for everyone.

"We've seen the immediate distress in acute care and for some patients the impacts of that will be lifelong. Cutting people off has had an impact and we've seen that play out in cities where they've had lockdowns," she said.

"And we've had patients who were terrified to go out based on what they were seeing on social media or on TV.

"Our teams have done an amazing job to deliver care, and our public health teams have been instrumental in getting information out there – even just opening people's eyes to things like how important physical activity is."

Ms Gee said one of the benefits of the pandemic had been the chance to advance services like telehealth and look at how healthcare can be delivered differently.

"There's been changes in how governments make decisions, changes in access to telehealth and different ways of treating patients," she said.

"The pandemic has been horrific, of course, but in a lot ways it has forced us to become more creative and develop very quickly true innovation in the delivery of healthcare across the range of treatment settings.

"In some ways, it made my life vastly easier and I think it was the same for a lot of people – I ended up getting a lot of time back. Prior to this I spent a lot of time in airports.

"And even though it will be lovely to get back to some necessary face-to-face, in many ways it's been good to get away from that mindset of 'this is how we've always done it'."

In accepting her award, Ms Gee said it would be impossible to thank everyone she wanted to, but particularly singled out her children, Tom and Alexia, for being her "inspiration".

As her career continues, she said she simply hoped for "more of the same".

"There's so much to be done and so much more I can do," she said.