D2D 5.0: Team Profile Indicators – Research Study

In D2D 5.0, we are giving teams the opportunity to answer additional team profile questions, which will help AFHTO members better understand what team characteristics are enablers of quality improvement. Additionally, teams will be able to contribute this data to a provincial study on the delivery of integrated care for individuals with multi-morbidity. As always, participation is optional. You may choose to answer some or all of the team profile questions but not participate in the study. Or you may choose not to answer any of the team profile questions. However, if you wish to participate in the study, you must answer all of them.

What are the objectives of the study?

1. Examine the determinants (organizational features and team characteristics) of integration (collaboration) within primary care teams.
2. Assess the association of integration efforts in primary care teams with Emergency Department visits and acute care admissions for conditions that can be managed in the community.

You are invited to participate in a research study designed to evaluate the delivery of integrated care within primary care teams in Ontario – with an emphasis on Family Health Teams (FHTs) and Community Health Centers (CHCs), given their inherent focus on a team-based model of care. Your participation will play a vital role in helping to understand the drivers of integration and the impact of integrated care within primary care teams on important patient and system-level outcomes.

What’s in it for me?

Your responses to the questionnaires will offer key insights into the drivers and extent of integration within your primary care team. For participating in the project, your practice will receive customized reports highlighting the practice’s integration score and a summary of how your results compare with other study participants.

Who is involved?

This research study will be managed by Dr. Walter Wodchis – Principal Investigator for the Health System Performance Research Network and Associate Professor at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto, with support from Association of Family Health Teams (AFHTO) and Association of Ontario Heath Centers (AOHC). All Family Health Teams (FHT) and Community Health Centers (CHC) are invited to participate in this study. The University of Toronto Office of Research Ethics has approved this study (Study Protocol #33699).

What is being asked of you?

The 12 questions of the Organizational Profile Questionnaire (OPQ) are included in the Team Profile Data section of D2D 5.0.  They take about 10 minutes to complete. Clicking on the Team Profile Data Submission button in the D2D submission platform will take you to a team profile survey. You will be asked whether you are willing to be contacted by the researchers.

• If you answer “yes,” you will be asked to provide contact information for our research partners to follow up with you, and your answers to the OPQ questions will be included in the research data.
• If you answer “no,” you will not be asked to provide contact information, and your responses to the OPQ questions will not be included in the research data; however, they will still be included in D2D data analysis.

 How will the OPQ data be used?

1. De-identified OPQ data will be analyzed and individual practices will receive a summary of their results including comparisons to aggregated findings across all participants.
2. Data will be linked with other administrative data and anonymized before being analyzed.

What confidentiality practices will be followed?

Our research partners will link the practice-level survey results to practice-level summary data based on health administrative data including rates of patient emergency department visits, hospitalizations and hospital admissions. The linkage with health administrative data will be undertaken at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) which holds the health administrative data. After linkage, all identifying information will be removed from the data. Analyses of linked practice-level data will be undertaken using anonymized data. Only aggregate data will be used in any reports or publications resulting from this study.

How do I learn more?

If you have any questions or require any additional information about the study you may contact Carol Mulder, AFHTO’s Provincial Lead for the Quality Improvement Decision Support Program, or our research partner Anum Khan from the University of Toronto. You may also contact the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Toronto at 416-946-5763.