In Strategic plans

Health service and system planning

The Department of Health is responsible for statewide health service planning for the public health system and monitoring of system performance against those plans and strategies.

Statewide health service plans or strategies guide further planning at the Department of Health and Hospitals and Health Services (HHSs) level.

Health service planning aims to improve health service delivery and/or system performance to better meet the health need of a population. It comprises the process of aligning the delivery of existing health services to meet the changing patterns of need and use of services. This aims to make the most effective use of available and future health resources (funding, staff and infrastructure).

Health service planning is future orientated and usually adopts a medium-long term (10–15 years) perspective supporting healthcare providers to respond to:

health improvement for targeted populations
increasing or changing demand for health services
improved health service delivery models
emerging trends in health service delivery
new policy initiatives and directions.

Statewide health service plans and strategies are based on the health needs of people who use Queensland public health services and may be targeted towards a:

specific geographical area (e.g. statewide, south east Queensland)
particular population group (e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)
specific clinical or service stream/s (e.g. diabetes services).