The Alliance

The Alliance, comprised of: Merri; Dianella; Inner South; and North Richmond Community Health Services, manages a combined budget in excess of $90 million, and delivers comprehensive, integrated primary health services to over 1 million people across 12 local government areas of Victoria.

Aims

The aim of the Alliance is to create a platform for maintaining viable and strong organisations that are connected to their local communities, but that also harness the efficiencies of scale available to larger organisations. The Alliance represents a ‘middle path’ between complete independence and merger; harnessing the benefits that come with scale, but also maintaining the local governance structures required to deliver flexible, place-based solutions that are embedded within local communities.

With the number one priority of providing effective and efficient primary and community care, particularly to vulnerable populations, the savings generated through efficiencies will be reinvested in direct services tailored to the needs of the communities we serve.

Principles

The Alliance embraces the following principles and goals: cooperation and collaboration; a desire to see each other succeed; establishing clear sector positions to overcome the perceptions of a fragmented sector; commitment to growth orientation and economic discipline; sector leadership; and commitment to improving the evidence base needed to strengthen our value proposition. The core principles of ViCHA are:

1. ViCHA is an alliance which supports it members to:
1. Grow and develop to meet community health and wellbeing needs;
2. Achieve business efficiencies in order to deliver more to communities;
3. Advocate for communities served collectively and with a stronger voice;
4. Improve the health and wellbeing of communities served through innovation and service development.
2. Where there is an opportunity to achieve one of the above objectives, one member organisation will act as the lead auspice.
3. Members will seek to collaborate rather than compete with one another. When opportunities present themselves with the potential for competing interests, ViCHA members will collaborate to achieve the objectives.

Benefits

With the number one priority of providing effective and efficient primary care to the whole community, with a particular focus on engaging isolated, vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, the savings generated through efficiencies will be reinvested in direct services tailored to the needs of the communities we serve.

From a client and community perspective, each member CHS will remain autonomous and embedded within its local community. The Alliance will work on discrete collaborative projects to achieve the above objectives in order to deliver more to clients and communities. Demonstrating the benefits of this approach, the Alliance was recently successful in securing a Victorian Government ICT grant of $2.4 million to develop a new Client Management System. The Alliance will lead the sector in developing a new CMS that delivers significant cost efficiencies, along with improved client care outcomes.

Downloads

Internal Briefing Paper