Cathy Balding

Cathy Balding is the Director of Qualityworks, a consultancy dedicated to building the capacity of health services for improving the safety and quality of their care. She has been involved in health service management, quality and clinical governance for 20 years, in national and state roles, in large and small health services and across the community, acute and aged care sectors. Cathy has led and participated in various state and national healthcare quality and clinical governance initiatives, including the development of the national performance indictor program for the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, and as inaugural manager of the Victorian Quality Council, the Ministerial advisory council on health care safety and quality for the state of Victoria. She has published journal articles and provided education in quality and clinical governance nationally and internationally, and over the past 5 years has developed four healthcare quality frameworks: the Victorian and South Australian Safety and Quality Frameworks, the Victorian Cancer Services Clinical Quality Framework and the Victorian Mental Health Quality Framework. In 2011,Cathy published \'The Srategic Quality Manager\' a handbook for Quality Managers. Professionally, Cathy is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Healthcare Management at La Trobe University, an Accreditation surveyor for the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards and a Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Service Managers. She sits on the Western Health Board Quality Committee as an external adviser and is a member of the Board of Uniting Aged Care as well as chairing the UAC Board Quality Committee. She has a particular interest in developing organisational systems for effectively engaging in improving safety and quality, and in supporting and enhancing the healthcare quality manager role. Publications 2005-2011 Balding C, ‘The Strategic Quality Manager’. Arcade Custom, Australia, 2011. Leggat SG, Balding C & Anderson JA (2011) Empowering healthcare managers in Australia: An action learning approach. Health Services Management Research. 24: 196-202. Balding C, ‘From quality assurance to clinical governance.’ Australian Health Review, vol 32, no 3, 2008. Balding, C, “Embedding Organisational QI Implementation through Middle Manager Ownership”, The International Journal for Healthcare Quality Assurance, vol. 18, no. 4, 2005. Balding, C, “Strengthening clinical governance through cultivating the line management role”, Australian Health Review, vol. 29, no. 3, 2005.