On 17 December 2015 the NSW Acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield, released a report on the care that is provided to mental health patients in the first seven days after they are discharged from acute mental health units.
 
The audit examined models of care provided by five Local Health Districts: Northern NSW, Sydney, Western Sydney, Central Coast, and Murrumbidgee. The audit looked at how well these Local Health Districts implemented the Ministry of Health’s policy directive on the transfer of mental health patients from hospitals to the community.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #263 - released 17 December 2015

Serious system limitations prevented TAFE NSW from providing sufficient and appropriate evidence to support recorded student revenue of $477 million, student receivables and accrued income of $47.6 million and unearned revenue of $398 million.
 
These limitations resulted in: 

• a qualified audit opinion being issued for TAFE NSW;
• delays in enrolling students;
• inability to fully reconcile cash balances;
• difficulties in reconciling student enrolments with revenues recorded in the financial statements;
• large volumes of manual processing.

On 9 September 2015, the Acting Auditor-General of New South Wales, Tony Whitfield, released a report on Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts.
 
All scheduled bus services in the Sydney metropolitan area are provided under contracts with the public and private operators. The contracts allow Transport for NSW (TfNSW) to determine what bus services are provided and to whom. This audit assessed the effectiveness of TfNSW’s design and management of these contracts.
 
Bus services provided under the Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts have largely been effective and efficient. Operators are mostly meeting their key performance indicators. Customer satisfaction is better than under the previous contracts and improving, patronage is increasing, and the unit costs of providing services are now lower than under the previous contracts. 
 
However, punctuality remains a problem. Private operators are mostly starting their trips on time, but rarely meeting their mid and end-of-trip targets. State Transit Authority’s (STA) punctuality is improving but is worse than private operators, and other areas of performance are generally below private operators.
 
The current situation is a substantial improvement over what we found in our 2010 audit on the previous contracts.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #258 - released 9 September 2015

NSW Health has achieved considerable success over recent years in reducing average length of stay despite increasing pressure on hospital admissions by older and chronically ill patients. This success has been driven by changes in the way health services are delivered, such as the increasing use of same day care for treatments that previously required overnight hospital stays. 
 
There is a good level of length of stay information available and this information is actively used to manage the time patients spend in hospital.
 
Available data suggest that the rate of unplanned readmissions has not reduced in NSW despite various statewide and local strategies. NSW Health is undertaking research to better understand unplanned readmissions, their causes and the best ways to address them.
 
There are many local and statewide initiatives that aim to reduce length of stay and unplanned readmissions. However, the impact of some local and statewide initiatives on length of stay and unplanned readmissions are not well understood and quantified due to the lack of evaluations conducted.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #250 - released 23 April 2015

The Department’s framework for VET reform has the potential to effectively achieve the government’s immediate objectives for the reform, which are associated with meeting its commitments under the National Partnership Agreement for Skills Reform without spending more. We found that the government is addressing VET reform objectives in the following order of priority: no extra cost (budget neutrality), TAFE viability, quality VET, access to VET for regions and equity groups, more contestability, student choice. Overall, we conclude that a more balanced approach, by putting more emphasis on increased contestability and student choice, is more likely to maximise the public value for the government’s investment in VET.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #249 - released 29 January 2015