INSIDER: CEO Judith Barker’s care mission the wind beneath RFDS wings as the flying doctor approaches 100

We have all seen the news footage of a sheepish-looking tourist giving a feeble wave while being wheeled on to the tarmac at Jandakot airport following a Royal Flying Doctor Service rescue mission in the Pilbara or Gascoyne. Perhaps you were even one of the 10,270 patients RFDS retrieved last year having suffered a snake bite in the bush, a fall at Karijini National Park or a medical episode while working offshore or on site. It is one of the reasons we are so willing to pack up our four-wheel-drives and camping gear and head out to explore our rugged, remote and vast State, because we know that if we need help, RFDS will be there. The not-for-profit organisation has been rescuing and helping Australians and visitors exploring our vast and varied backyard for close to 100 years. But while RFDS is known around the globe for its dramatic aeromedical retrievals — thanks in no small part to two popular TV drama series — the organisation also offers a lifeline to hundreds of West Australians living in rural and remote areas through remote GP health clinics run out of bases in Broome, Port Hedland, Meekatharra and Kalgoorlie. Last year, these remote health clinics, including one at Yakanarra, south-west of Fitzroy Crossing, treated more than 6315 patients offering a range of health services to those living in isolated areas. At the organisation’s WA HQ at Jandakot airport, chief executive Judith Barker usually starts her day by popping in to chat with staff at the operations centre who field emergency calls from across WA. Barker likes to catch up on what has happened during the night and with operations running around the clock, seven days a week there is rarely a time there isn’t at least one RFDS plane in the sky. RFDS employs around 400 people across its five WA bases. The diverse workforce spans healthcare workers, pilots, engineers, logistics and operations personnel, finance staff and those who work in community relations covering areas such as fundraising, bequests, partnerships, communications and marketing. And while Barker can’t be an expert in everything, she knows the best way to find out what she needs to know is to check in with those at the coalface. “I always rely on the people around me and I always ask lots of questions,” Barker says of her leadership style. “I want to understand why we do things the way we do. “In a previous role someone once asked how I make decisions so quickly but I don’t, I go around and let everyone have their say and I am just able to listen, soak it all up and make decisions based on that.” Nadia Somers, head of logistics and business continuity at RFDS, says Barker’s collaborative approach and ability to foster strong relationships with staff was very quickly noted when she joined the organisation in October 2022. “Judith has an incredible way of connecting with not only her leadership team but also the wider workforce,” Somers says. “The team really value the time Judith spends with them. Her inquisitive nature and mischievous banter is always well received.” Somers describes Barker as resilient, curious, decisive and a leader who values collaboration. “Judith leads by example as an actionable leader,” she says. “She knows her voice and is assertive when she needs to be. And she is an innovator who will often say, ‘I’m here, what can we improve? What is impossible that we can make possible?’” Above & Beyond Since taking the reins from RFDS WA’s first female chief executive Rebecca Tomkinson 16 months ago, Barker has done a lot of listening to her staff, the community and affiliated organisations and companies that support RFDS. Next month, after a lengthy research and consultation period, RFDS will launch its new five-year strategy, Above & Beyond, which will lead the organisation into its centenary celebrations in 2028. Part of the strategy is to bring greater equality in healthcare to remote communities. It’s an issue Barker is vocally passionate about, citing the fact that early intervention and continuity of care for preventable illnesses can have life-changing impacts on some of the most vulnerable and isolated West Australians. “There is going to be a big focus on advocacy,” Barker says. “RFDS has been around for 95 years. And we are very aware of the people that rely on us and the communities we need to look after. We go where we are needed and we operate in the areas where no one else will go. We go out to Yakanarra clinic every week, we are the people that they depend on to get their healthcare. They know we’re going to show up every week. “The focus is very much in the community and we also absolutely need to work with other organisations like the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and WA Country Health Service to build stronger partnerships for better results.” Other key priorities include expanding services to support offshore and mine site workers, a new community engagement framework providing a more open dialogue with regional communities and the opening of a bricks and mortar GP clinic in Kalgoorlie. Upgrades to RFDS bases and new aircraft are also on the cards and the organisation has just placed an order for nine new Pilatus aircraft which will being to arrive from Switzerland next year and a flight simulator which is expected to save an estimated $2 million per annum in pilot time and training costs. RFDS aircraft need to be replaced regularly, at a cost of about $8 million each, as they cover an average of 9 million km annually, flying more hours than most commercial aircraft. “We are looking at about $230 million capital replacement program over the next five years,” Barker says. “It will take some careful budgeting but we have lot of great supporters like the State Government, LotteryWest, Telethon and corporate partners such as Rio Tinto and Fortescue, to get us where we need to go.” In 2023, RFDS total revenue was shy of $125m, made up mainly from government funding, grants, donations and bequests. “Not-for-profits have always operated their businesses quite lean but now the expectations are similar to profit organisations,” Barker says. “Yet not-for-profits tend to only be funded for frontline services, not back of house. That’s why it’s really important to us to not just have financial support, but in-kind support. “Some of the large corporations we deal with advise us on our sustainability strategy for the future, and one of our corporate partners is offering mentoring and placements for our leaders to learn and grow, all of that is really important.” Barker says the RFDS team are enthusiastic about the ambitious plans for the future. “We’ve done a lot of listening,” she says. “There’s a real sense of excitement about what this strategy will mean for us in this next year, and the direction that we’re going.” In the blood Barker didn’t have dreams of becoming a CEO as a young girl growing up in Cloverdale. In fact, like many people, she was unsure what she wanted to do. She completed an English literature degree at university but when she was unable to find a job related to her degree, she found herself at a crossroads — figuratively and literally. “I remember sitting at a set of traffic lights in Vic Park and an ambulance went through the intersection and I thought, ‘I can do that’,” she says. What is surprising about the spur of the moment realisation is the fact that by signing up to the ambulance service, she would literally be following in her father’s footsteps. “You could say it is in our blood,” she says. “When my dad left the navy he joined the ambulance service and ended up the chief superintendent for St John WA. “I joined when I was 22 and my brother followed the year after and he’s still a paramedic up in Broome.” In fact, given her background it seems almost fated that Barker would end up where she has. Her family have always been heavily involved in community work and their occupations heavily skew towards health — “my mum was a dental nurse, then an EN, my stepmum was a nurse, it’s just something we are as a family”. Barker also has strong rural ties with her family scattered throughout the State. “While I grew up in Perth, all my family other than my parents now live in rural and remote WA from Port Hedland to Geraldton, Broome and the Wheatbelt so that’s another positive about working with RFDS,” she says. Barker, who was awarded an Ambulance Service Medal in last year’s Australia Day Honours, admits that when she signed up to be a paramedic she thought it would be a job she would stick with “for life”. “I thought I would stay on the road and it’s an amazing job so why wouldn’t I?,” she says. “But then I started to want to change things. Not that anything was really broken but I wanted to make things better. And so I started taking on different roles. I went and taught new students or I went into the call centre. “I wanted to try and understand things to try and make things a bit better for the people on the road and for the patients. “I ended up becoming a CEO because that’s where you can make the biggest impact and implement positive changes.” Barker became the first female ambulance service CEO when she was appointed head of St John Northern Territory in March 2018, after a year as acting chief operating officer at South Australian Ambulance Service. During her four years in Darwin she came to grips with the actualities of remote living. “The Northern Territory is a very different place to live,” she says. “I lived on the edge of the CBD but I still had three snakes in my house in the space of eight months. There were a lot of snakes, a lot of crocs. “I remember sitting in my office one day having a meeting and we heard this almighty crash and out of the split system came what looked like a huge dinosaur claw. We took the vent off and there was a huge metre-long monitor lizard in there. You get used to that sort of thing. “I thought I knew what rural and remote health was but it wasn’t until I lived in the NT that I got a real appreciation for what it meant. It gave me a really good understanding and appreciation of what it means to try and get healthcare into remote areas and just how difficult it is.” After 20 years living interstate, the opportunity to head up RFDS wasn’t just a great career step for Barker, it also provided the opportunity to finally come home. “My dad has some health issues so it felt like the right time,” she says. “And it really is a privilege to lead an organisation that is so well known and well loved by West Australians.” Embracing the future Technological advancements are changing the nature of healthcare at a rapid rate. And while the RFDS straddles two worlds where a plane carrying state-of-the-art technology will land on a dirt track lit by petrol drums filled with burning toilet roll, Barker says it is important the organisation stays abreast of change without compromising the personal nature of their care model. While telehealth has exploded in Australia, particularly during the pandemic, assuming these services are a one-size-fits-all solution and can completely fill the gap in regional healthcare is misunderstanding the unique challenges and problems faced by those who live in remote areas. “Telehealth is a wonderful tool. It’s there for a lot of patients when nothing else can be but there are times that you just to see your GP or your psychologist or his specialist,” Barker says. On top of that people living in remote areas often deal with language barriers and lack of access to technology, internet or the training to use technology. “English is an introduced language to Australia, so there are a lot of people in rural and remote WA where it is their second or third language and they are not literate in it,” she says. “And so then trying to grapple with technology, bad internet connections because still, the network’s not great, and trying to deal with someone who only speaks English when you don’t necessarily speak it, that’s very tough.” Likewise she says the increased use of AI across the industry is something that can be of benefit helping but not replacing the people working in healthcare. “AI will be an adjunct to the workforce,” she says. “It will be useful to read cardiac results and X-rays, it will just enhance what the human being does. And hopefully using the right AI will make care safer. “AI technology is here, it isn’t going away so we need to figure out how we best use it to enhance care. And also, how we can utilise it to do some of the manual work our team do, and take those people doing that manual work and get them to value add, which means they will get more satisfaction from their job and we will get more from them, which is to the benefit of the organisation. “Ultimately technology is moving at such a rapid rate that I don’t think we have any idea what it will look like in five years. But if you think of decision making, rather than one person looking at cardiac results if you’ve got AI as a decision support tool, that’s going to make it safer. So we definitely need to get on board and figure out how to use it.” While Barker doesn’t know exactly how the future will look for RFDS, she is confident it will continue to be an organisation West Australians can trust to help them in their darkest hour. “I have worked alongside RFDS my whole career but coming into the organisation and experiencing the fundraising support and just how much people feel like we belong to them, that blew me away,” Barker says. “There’s real respect for what we do and people know they can rely on us.”

INSIDER: CEO Judith Barker’s care mission the wind beneath RFDS wings as the flying doctor approaches 100

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