This email was sent to EDs/Administrative Leads, Board Chairs and Lead Clinicians of AFHTO member organizations.
These are challenging times and we really appreciate the phenomenal care that is being provided by everyone working in team-based primary care and in health care. As the foundation of the health care system, your relationships with your patients and families are based on trust and they are looking to you now more than ever to be there for them during these very uncertain times. But through it all, taking care of yourself and your team to ensure there is a healthy workforce is paramount and important for your own health and well-being.
However, things are ramping up and there is a real need to start capacity planning should there be a need to redeploy health human resources to the ongoing fight against COVID-19. In the next few days you’ll receive a survey from the Ministry who are looking at capacity in the system – we’ll send that as soon as we get it, and would request that you prioritize filling that in as soon as you receive it.
Planning for More Virtual Care
Today Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health issued a memo Re: Managing Health Worker Illness and Return to Work COVID-19. In the document he makes recommendations related to travel and return to work for health care providers. He also notes:
While other services are decreasing their operations, in health care you are being called upon to care for patients and to be ready for surge. I am asking, where there may be an opportunity, for all health system employers to facilitate work arrangements that enable appropriate employees to work from home or to work virtually, if not re-deployable.
Health system employers should also consider a review of their services and practices to identify how they can provide services to patient groups virtually or remotely.
These are uncertain times, but the recommendation is to try to accommodate care for patients virtually as much as possible. If your providers, including IHPs and admin staff, do need to come into the clinics please ensure they are well protected. We are very aware of the PPE challenges in primary care and continue to press the Ministry and Ontario Health for updates on the supply issues and hope to have some information on that when provided.
We are currently working on business continuity plans and collecting policies related to accommodating staff to work from home and hope to share that with you soon – a reminder that we are posting materials on our site daily including the Ministry’s COVID-19 Situation Reports. If you have anything you can share, please send to info@afhto.ca and we will make sure to share it with the teams.
Many teams have already started virtual care or employing some activities to support patients and families during this period of self isolation and social distancing. Here are some tools you may want o implement with your teams:
- Guide for social calls and check-ins during COVID-19 (including a script for calls)
- COVID-19 Pandemic Primary Care Team Responses (Virtual Care and Innovative Projects)
- Draft Policies on Virtual Visits and Working from Home
- List of Quaran-tivities you can share with your staff and patients/families who are looking at ways to keep busy during self isolation
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