Clinical Governance

HEMS Clinical Ltd

HEMS Clinical Ltd (HCL) is a subsidiary of HEMS New Zealand Ltd and is responsible for the clinical governance of HEMS services.

What is Clinical Governance?

Clinical governance is a formal system of quality control and continuous improvement in patient care that minimises risk and provides transparent accountability to stakeholders.

Clinical governance supports:

  • high quality, safe and effective patient care
  • identification and mitigation of risks
  • better patient outcomes
  • coordinated data collection and analysis
  • using evidence to inform system improvement opportunities
  • adapting services to better provide for communities’ needs
  • meeting the aspirations and expectations of patients
  • compliance with legislative requirements.

Clinical Performance

HCL has responsibility for investigating adverse patient events and ensuring lessons learnt help improve services in future. 

HCL’s team are independent clinical professionals, ensuring any investigation they conduct is completed with integrity and objectivity.

Transparency is vital to build confidence for all stakeholders in our service.  Keeping patients, family or whānau informed of progress in any adverse clinical event investigation and engaging with them in restorative practices is part of that process. 

All clinical events investigated are assigned a Severity Assessment Code (SAC) .  These codes range from a SAC 1 (an event that results in death or permanent severe loss of function) to a SAC 4.

To find out more about SAC rating and triage visit the Health Quality and Safety Commission website.

SAC 1 and 2 events 

  • 2021 – 0
  • 2022 – 0
  • 2023 – 0 
  • 2024 – 0
  • 2025 – 1 SAC 2 event
  • 2026 to date – 0 

Note that investigations into provisional SAC events are not reported here until the outcomes are confirmed.