AFHTO members meet with Ministry: what we know and what we’re doing about it

Over forty AFHTO members from around the province – the combination of AFHTO’s Physician Leadership Council (PLC) and ED Advisory Council (EDAC) – came together last Thursday to dialogue with the Ministry to gain further clarity on what is known (and not known) as it plans for primary care.  One of the messages is that work to develop policy and strategy is underway and that there will be further discussion and consultation as this progresses. Following this dialogue, members concluded the priorities for action they identified over July/August are on the right track, and then developed further advice on each topic.

Meeting summary

For the full meeting report click here. So what do we know and where do we go from here?  EDAC and PLC members concluded that:

• Members should expect a closer relationship between LHINs and primary care, but we don’t know yet what that will look like and whether or not this will include any form of funding and accountability. We need to further develop these relationships right away. AFHTO is facilitating meetings and preparing education materials to help members do this.
• Government’s priority on access and equity signals that interprofessional teams must continue (or begin) to look more broadly at their communities to find ways to broaden access to team-based care to those who need it most.
  • More equitable funding is needed to attract and retain the staff needed to do all this work. We have no formal commitment from government as of yet; this remains the top priority for AFHTO’s advocacy.
  • As demand grows to broaden access to teams, AFHTO members’ collective work in defining how we measure and track health human resource capacity is critical to reduce the risk of compromising patient care and teamwork. The goal is to introduce an initial indicator of this capacity in the next cycle of Data to Decisions – D2D 3.0.
• Government is considering a common set of publicly reported, primary care performance indicators. The collective work of AFHTO members to advance measurement is absolutely critical to lead the way to ensure these measures are meaningful to clinicians and manageable for reporting.
• At the strategy and planning level, we remind the Ministry and LHINs of the need for thoughtful ways to include primary care leaders in its development.
• As teams, we also need to look internally at how we can improve the value we deliver to our patients and communities.
• Transparency is critical – at all levels, from the Ministry, from LHINs, from AFHTO, from all of the stakeholders. Information is needed from the Ministry since the voids are being filled by misinformation.

In light of AFHTO’s growing impact on the provincial stage, EDAC and PLC members applauded as the AFHTO President announced the board’s decision to confer the title of Chief Executive Officer to Angie Heydon, following their recent leadership review. For further details from this meeting please see the full report [PDF].