Transformation at St John Ambulance Western Australia

‘We’re a large, complex organisation with over 6000 people serving a community spread over more than one million square miles,’ says Anthony Smith, Deputy CEO at St John Ambulance (Western Australia).

‘While we consistently met performance targets, we wanted to create a step change in our approach to be well positioned to meet the accelerating health demands of the community.

It’s the biggest ambulance service in the world by area that invested in an eighteen-month initiative driven by a desire to improve its existing efficient performance – not as a cost cutting or performance rescue exercise.

Meet St John Ambulance (Western Australia) – an organisation now at the leading edge of healthcare management and cultural change thanks to the framework undertaken with the assistance and guidance of Lightfoot Solutions.

Anthony Smith, Deputy CEO at St John WA, says the program has embedded a new evidence-led way of team- working from grassroots staff to senior management.

‘Key to this change was a fundamental realignment of all staff from a ‘gut-feel’ dominated decision making model to an evidence-led model.

In embarking on business transformation in partnership with Lightfoot Solutions, St John’s approach took into account people, processes and systems across its large, complex organisation. Connecting 6000 people and engaging them all on a journey towards a new way of working was one of the key objectives of the initiative dubbed ‘New Horizons’ for the future-making role it would play.

Over eighteen months the programme took the organisation through shaping a clear strategy, implementing and embedding a new way of working, and achieving sustained, measurable results in operational and clinical performance.