WA Country Health Service Annual Report 2024-2025

We are very pleased to advise our WA Country Health Service Annual Report 2024-2025 is now available.

The report was tabled in Parliament by the Minister for Health on 14 October 2025 and provides a transparent account of our operations over the past financial year.

It’s also full of stories about our more than 13,000-strong workforce, highlighting the incredible work you’re doing to deliver world-class healthcare throughout country WA.

There have been many highlights over the past 12 months:

• Our staff attended 476,178 emergency department presentations, conducted 806,924 outpatient appointments and helped deliver 4,314 brand new Western Australian babies.
• In line with our commitment to attract and retain staff, we welcomed more medical interns, newly qualified nurses and midwives, and pharmacy interns than ever before.
• As part of our ongoing efforts to ‘grow our own’, we launched two new medical training pathways. The Intensive Care Training Pathway provides a structured and supportive approach to intensive care medicine training and is designed to integrate training across tertiary, metropolitan and country health services. The WA Rural Physician Training Pathway provides trainees with hands-on experience working in country hospital settings while incorporating in-reach rotations in partnered metropolitan training settings.
• Our ongoing efforts to strengthen partnerships with key service providers reached new heights, with the announcement of a new 10-year contract with the Royal Flying Doctor Service WA worth more than $800 million.
• Our Command Centre teamed up with service providers in the new State Health Operations Centre (SHOC) in a fit-for-purpose facility in the heart of Perth. With teams from the Department of Health, Royal Flying Doctor Service, St John WA, and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, co-ordination and management of patient hospital movements across the health system are now under one roof, allowing front line clinicians to focus on the delivery of patient care.
• In January 2025, a $22 million mental health crisis care initiative expanded to Albany and surrounding communities, with the Acute Care and Response Team (ACRT) providing rapid response and support to young people up to 18 years of age experiencing a mental health crisis, as well as their families and carers.
• The Country Patient Health Support (Country PatHS) service received a WA Health Excellence Award in the Aboriginal Health category, demonstrating that a coordinated and person-centred approach can make a real difference to country people’s access and experience of care when travelling to the metropolitan area.
• To further strengthen staff and patient safety, we evolved our innovative Virtual Security Hub, which provides 24/7 real-time virtual monitoring to some of the State’s most remote health facilities. Following its initial rollout at seven sites—Kununurra, Hedland, Karratha, Meekatharra, Collie, Bridgetown, and Halls Creek—the service expanded to Fitzroy Crossing Hospital.
• We continued to harness virtual care technology, including the expansion of the innovative Heart Health Support Service to residents in Esperance and Norseman, following implementation in the Wheatbelt and South West. This one-on-one telehealth-enabled service connects those in recovery from a cardiac event, like a heart attack, with specialist rehabilitation nurses.
• We progressed key infrastructure projects like the Geraldton Regional Hospital redevelopment, three renal dialysis units in Karratha, Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek, the new Laverton Hospital build and the $471.5 million Bunbury Regional Hospital redevelopment – set to be the biggest ever undertaken in country WA. We also opened the new $9.86 million Dongara Health Centre redevelopment.

Check out a snapshot of the year that was below:

To all our staff, we’re immensely proud of your accomplishments over the past year, and excited to continue our life saving and life changing work to meet our Vision to be a global leader in rural and remote care, supporting healthier country communities.

This financial year is shaping up to be another incredible year in country healthcare, especially as we implement our new Strategic Plan 2025-2030.

Thank you again for your dedication and professionalism, and for your remarkable efforts to take care of our communities and each other.