Calvary Hospital's new chief executive says the northside health facility has addressed its financial woes and is starting to achieve gains financially and for patients.
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In her first interview since being appointed chief executive last month, Karen Edwards said she was determined to see the Bruce hospital improve its financial performance.
She had been chief executive of Calvary Health Care Kogarah for six years.
"This opportunity (in Canberra) for me was just a natural progression, (to do) something I love. I've enjoyed working for Calvary, I love the public sector (and) the opportunity for acute hospital experience was great," she said.
Ms Edwards joined Calvary Hospital after the northside health facility suffered a difficult financial year in 2013-14, posting an $11.3 million loss.
She said the hospital had addressed the financial troubles.
"I guess going forward the focus is that we need to not put ourselves in that position again," she said.
"That has been the focus of the past three or four months. We've done a lot of work around that and I have to say everyone has been absolutely fantastic around that.
"We're starting to see not only some financial gains but also some activity gains in terms of our emergency department, the treatment times, all of those kinds of things, we're starting to see some real gains there and I think that's positive reinforcement to everyone that what we're doing is the right thing to do.
"Our commitment is to operate within the funding that is available to us and to meet the activity targets that are associated with that, that's our agreement with ACT Health and that's our absolute commitment."
Ms Edwards believed some of the challenges she will face were no different to those facing the hospital sector in general.
"There's increasing demand for services.. and we need to be aware and prepared for that," she said.
"We've got an increasing ageing population that are going to place demands on health services but people are living longer and healthier which is a great thing but obviously that has a commensurate flow-on effect for health services."
Ms Edwards also admitted another challenge would be working with staff around organisational changes which might be made at the hospital.
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Despite the challenges Calvary might face, Ms Edwards said the hospital had a positive future. Calvary recently announced plans to build a new private hospital on its Bruce site.
"I think the positives are that we have a really committed workforce and one of the things that struck me in the last few months that I've been here is how committed the staff are and how much they really want the hospital to succeed and grow," she said.
"Some of the gains we've seen over the last few months in terms of our performance against some of our key indicators such as elective surgery and the emergency department ... point to real positive things that we can do and can achieve."
