November - Sunraysia Community Health Services (SCHS)

Sunraysia Community Health Services (SCHS) has been providing primary healthcare to the district of Mildura, in north-west Victoria, for over 30 years. Servicing a regional area of about 50,000 people, it offers more than 50 services from five sites, with an operating budget of over $13 million.

More than 150 staff provide services including home nursing, palliative care, aged care assessment, community dental, diabetes management, Well Women’s Clinic, allied health, aged care and disability, counselling and mental health, drug treatment, refugee health, health promotion and education and chronic disease management.

SCHS’s commitment to continuous improvement and the best outcomes for publicly funded health care for the community has been recognised by the Premier of Victoria by winning the 2012 and 2009 Victorian Primary Health Service of the Year. These achievements are a significant reflection on the work, effort and support of our dedicated staff and partners. 

Connecting Up has become one of our valuable partners, not only in providing access to their technology donation program but helping us keep abreast with the changing ICT environment in the not-for-profit sector. We sought assistance to achieve our IT strategy to build a more robust, reliable and efficient IT network. Thus far we have received in excess of $100,000 in software donations enabling us to sustain our investment in state-of-the-art technology including virtualisation, remote services, SharePoint, migration to Windows Server 2008 and disaster recovery software, all of which is critical in delivering health services.

There are exciting times ahead for SCHS and our clients with Commonwealth Government jointly funding the second stage of our building redevelopment master plan, with $15.2 million contributed by the Commonwealth and $2 million from our own funds. Works are expected to be completed by mid-2015. The project will enable us to consolidate the majority of our services to one site and help improve the coordination of care for our clients. Our Board and staff have worked tirelessly since 1999 to source funding from State and Commonwealth Governments to enable this dream to become a reality. The State Government supported the first stage with $5.6 million, while the second stage is a joint venture.