The Way Forward: Care Coordination Being Led by Primary Care Leadership Session Summary and LHIN Care Coordination Guidance Document

AFHTO’s 2017 Annual Conference Leadership Session on care coordination generated enthusiasm and was relevant, timely and successful. The majority of AFHTO members are ready to ‘embed’ care coordinators and have made written commitments to advance discussions and plans that support local implementation of the Minister’s mandate letter. Most importantly, AFHTO members – governors, administrators, lead physicians and nurse practitioners – are actively seeking to enhance the relationship, engagement and communications within, and across LHINs, on care coordination and other topics impacting the patient experience in primary care. Earlier this week the LHINs were provided with a guidance document entitled Connecting Care Coordination in Primary Care Settings: Guidance for Ontario’s Local Health Integration Network – this document is intended to guide LHINs in developing plans to enable stronger connections between care coordinators and primary care. LHINs are being charged with quite a few deliverables before the end of the fiscal year, including completing a readiness assessment with primary care looking at improving relationships and connections with care coordinators, with the intention of embedding these providers where possible. The interprofessional team-based models of FHTs, NPLCs, CHCs and AHACs have also been identified as the target groups for early implementation. With the guidance document now out, the LHINs need to be engaging with our teams in order to meet their mandate letter deliverable, so they’re interested in hearing from you. To support your ongoing conversations with the LHINs, and to articulate how FHTs and NPLCs are more than ready to be at the forefront of primary care/care coordination integration, please find attached the summary report from the October 25th Leadership Session – The Way Forward: Care Coordination Being Led by Primary Care.  This summary report will also be shared with policy makers at the Ministry, as well as all LHIN CEOs and their senior management team. We encourage our FHT and NPLC leadership to use this report and request a meeting with your LHINs to keep the conversation going and to speak to the commitments that were developed during the session. If you have any questions or need assistance in moving forward with this really important initiative, please contact us at info@afhto.ca.  Please also let us know about your ongoing conversations so we can keep a pulse on what is happening in the province.