Ultimate Blogging Championship

Author: sitesuper

  • Developing and Sustaining Interprofessional Health Care: Optimizing patients/clients, organizational, and system outcomes

    The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) has published a best practice guideline, Developing and Sustaining Interprofessional Health Care: Optimizing patients/clients, organizational, and system outcomes. This guideline is intended to foster healthy work environments. The focus in developing this guideline was identifying attributes of interprofessional care that will optimize quality outcomes for patients/clients, providers, teams, the organization and the system. This guideline identifies best practices to enable, enhance and sustain teamwork and interprofessional collaboration, and to enhance positive outcomes for patients/clients, systems and organizations. It is based on the best available evidence; where evidence was limited, the recommendations were based on the consensus of expert opinion. Click here for the guideline and additional resources for implementation.

  • Supporting improvement: updates on QIPs, QIDS, PC Nursing Education Fund, Primary Care-Public Health conference

    There are many new resources and learning opportunities for AFHTO members, here is some reading for over the holidays to help prepare for the New Year (scroll down for further details):

    • Quality Improvement Planning (QIP) – Navigator and Guidance Materials now available
    • RNAO-MOHLTC Primary Care Fund to augment the Nursing Education Initiative
    • Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists’ (QIDSS) Symposium, January 20 to 22, 2014
    • Prevent More to Treat Less: Public Health and Primary Health Care Conference, June 4 & 5, 2014

    Quality Improvement Planning (QIP) – Navigator and Guidance Materials now available Login information for the Health Quality Ontario (HQO) QIP Navigator has been sent to all primary care organizations. All QIPs will need to be submitted through the QIP Navigator by April 1, 2014.  If you have any difficulties logging in or have not received your password please e-mail QIP@HQOntario.ca for assistance. QIP templates and guidance documents can also be accessed directly online: http://qipnavigator.hqontario.ca/Resources/PrimaryCareSector.aspx RNAO-MOHLTC Primary Care Fund The Ministry has provided additional one-time funding to augment the Nursing Education Initiative (NEI) to support Ontario’s primary care registered nurses to refine their knowledge, skills and competencies; as a step towards enabling full scope of practice. Full rules are online; however, if a primary care RN has completed an educational program within the past 90 days they are encouraged to apply. Primary Care RNs could be eligible for up to $1500 in reimbursement and do not need to be an RNAO member to apply. Note that this is only for 2013/14, so applications submitted after March 15, 2014 may not be considered for the special funding. For complete details on the NEI and to apply, visit: www.rnao.ca/NEI Upcoming Events: January 20 to 22, 2014, Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists’ (QIDSS) Symposium The QIDSS symposium is a unique opportunity for professional development tailored specifically to Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists (QIDSS). It aims to optimize the utility of the QIDSS position in supporting host and partner FHTs in their QI efforts and investments. QIDSS will learn from industry experts, EMR vendors, and colleagues on industry standard best practices. The symposium also facilitates peer learning among specialists from across the province to support the new and evolving QIDSS role. Registration and program information have been e-mailed to QIDSS and host employers. June 4 & 5, 2014, Prevent More to Treat Less: Public Health and Primary Health Care Conference For the first time, Public Health and Primary Health Care will be hosting a joint conference focused on the shared vision of promoting the best possible health and wellbeing for everyone living in Ontario. This conference will take place June 4 & 5, 2014 at the Sheraton Parkway Toronto North. It will include inspiring presentations, panel discussions, learning and networking sessions that will enable representatives from both sectors to learn from each other and share best collaborative practices on shared priorities. Please visit: preventmoretotreatless.ca to see the Call for Participation details on the themes and sub-themes, the types of sessions, and the criteria that will be used to evaluate the submissions. The online submission form will be open in the New Year and a notification will be sent when it is live. In the meantime, please start brainstorming your presentations and reaching out to potential co-presenters.

  • QIP Navigator and Guidance Materials now available

    Login information for the Health Quality Ontario (HQO) QIP Navigator has been sent to all primary care organizations. All QIPs will need to be submitted through the QIP Navigator by April 1, 2014.  If you have any difficulties logging in or have not received your password please e-mail QIP@HQOntario.ca for assistance. QIP templates and guidance documents can also be accessed directly online: http://qipnavigator.hqontario.ca/Resources/PrimaryCareSector.aspx

  • RNAO-MOHLTC Primary Care Fund to augment the Nursing Education Initiative

    The Ministry has provided additional one-time funding to augment the Nursing Education Initiative (NEI) to support Ontario’s primary care registered nurses to refine their knowledge, skills and competencies; as a step towards enabling full scope of practice. Full rules are online; however, if a primary care RN has completed an educational program within the past 90 days they are encouraged to apply. Primary Care RNs could be eligible for up to $1500 in reimbursement and do not need to be an RNAO member to apply. Note that this is only for 2013/14, so applications submitted after March 15, 2014 may not be considered for the special funding. For complete details on the NEI and to apply, visit: www.rnao.ca/NEI

  • Ontario Heart Failure Strategy: Invitation to complete survey

    Forwarded on behalf of Cardiac Care Network of Ontario: In the next few months, the Cardiac Care Network of Ontario (CCN) will be releasing the Ontario Heart Failure Strategy. With no cohesive provincial approach to managing heart failure (HF), the current system of care is fragmented with patients often falling through the cracks during transitions leading to suboptimal care and resulting in potentially avoidable Emergency Department use, hospitalizations, and diminished quality of life. One of the solutions to addressing barriers to optimal HF care is the identification of how and where care is currently being provided. The easy part is finding self-identified Heart Failure Clinics and Specialists who are managing HF. While this is valuable information, we believe the true key to successfully designing a province-wide HF management system that will function in a large and heterogeneous province like Ontario lies with Primary Care Practitioners. This is where we need your help. We want to make sure that any Primary Care Practitioner in the province of Ontario who has an interest or expertise in HF will take this survey. The ultimate goal is to collate the results into a map of HF services across the province. This will make it easier for patients and healthcare providers to locate and access care, and will inform opportunities to enhance or augment services in communities that are lacking access. The link to the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CCNHeartFailure.  It takes about 20 minutes to complete. We thank you in advance for taking the time to complete the survey. Your efforts will help to ensure that we generate a complete and accurate list of HF providers in the province. ______________________________________________________________ Sudha Kutty Director, Knowledge Management Cardiac Care Network http://www.ccn.on.ca

  • The Ottawa Hospital Academic FHT receives OCFP Family Practice of the Year award

    Congratulations to The Ottawa Hospital Academic FHT for receiving the 2013 Family Practice of the Year Award from the Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP)! 2013 Family Practice of the Year – The Ottawa Hospital Academic FHT The Ottawa Hospital Academic Family Health Team (TOHAFHT) is composed of two sister sites (Civic and Riverside) dedicated to quality clinical service, strong health sciences teaching and education leadership, and robust primary care research. Their organizational vision and goal is “To provide each patient with world-class care, exceptional service, and the compassion that we would want for our loved ones.” This is accomplished in part by a group of dedicated family physicians who provide a true suite of services, from delivering babies at The Ottawa Hospital, providing care throughout the life span, and performing home visits and palliative care. The team’s success is in part due to collaborations with nurses, an in-house diabetes team, a pharmacist-run smoking cessation program, through dietician led healthy lifestyle programs and share mental health care programs. As a whole, TOHAFHT is stronger than its parts. The “Family Practice of the Year” is an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of the members of a family practice. The Ottawa Hospital Academic FHT joins five other Family Health Teams to receive the award since its inception in 2008.  Click here to see past and current winners of the “Family Practice of the Year” award.

  • QIDS Update 2013-11-26: EMR Landscape Report + QIDS Innovation Funding

    REMINDER:  Opportunity to apply for QIDS Innovation Funding

    A few days ago AFHTO announced the availability of $95,000 in QIDS Innovation Funding. Note that this one-time opportunity is very time sensitive. Interested applicants will need to notify Tim Burns (tim.burns@afhto.ca) of their intent to apply by December 6, 2013. This initiative will serve as a catalyst for collaboration and system capacity building. Every effort is being made to maintain a simple, yet transparent and open process for the allocation of these funds. All members, regardless of current QI or EMR sophistication are encouraged to consider applying or joining with peers to submit an application. It is anticipated that three to five projects will be supported. 

    Please refer to the QIDS Innovation Submission Process and Guidelines on the AFHTO members-only web-site for more detail. FHT EMR Landscape Report A first report on the FHT EMR Landscape is now available. AFHTO received over 120 suggestions for topics for discussion with EMR vendors at the October conference. The EMR sessions themselves were attended by over 330 individuals. The first FHT EMR Landscape Report will include an early analysis of gaps in adoption and functionality across EMRs. We look forward to your feedback as we would like to develop this into a regular report to share with members and our partners at OntarioMD and eHealth Ontario. QIDS Steering Committee Update The QIDS Steering Committee, Chaired by Ross Kirkconnell, had its first meeting on October 21. The group agreed to re-convene in the New Year for a more in-depth discussion of the six strategic themes that are emerging for the QIDS program:

    1. Collaboration and leadership

    2. Building QI Decision Support Capacity and Capability

    3. Optimizing the current state

    4. Identifying early opportunities to report on indicators and improving them over time

    5.  Aligning our partners and supply chain

    6. Innovating to create access to new data sources, tools and knowledge.

    QIDS Specialists in the field We are also delighted to hear from more and more QIDS Specialists and others in the decision support community in our weekly check-ins. For the list of QIDS Specialists and other decision support specialists across the province, please sign into the AFHTO members-only website then go to https://www.afhto.ca/news-events/news/library/qids/qids-specialist-team/.

    Please contact Denise Pinto (improve@afhto.ca) to be added to our weekly check-in group. Coming up: Privacy Resources: Depending on the local context and the goals of the QIDS partnerships, it is possible that complex privacy issues and concerns could be raised by the partners. In order to provide additional support and build our collective expertise, AFHTO will be retaining the services of a privacy expert. Please continue to make us aware of these issues and concerns as well as any solutions that you are implementing so that we can build the provincial knowledge base.

    Implementation of QIDS Partnerships: The provincial team is very interested in identifying practical means to support the evolution of QIDS partnerships. Tim Burns and Carol Mulder are reaching out to all QIDS hosts to gain a better understanding of successes and challenges in partnership implementation. We are aware that a number of very encouraging agreements are nearing fruition. Members are encouraged to share these documents with the provincial team as they become available so that they can serve as examples for others.  The team is also available to help facilitate partnership discussion where this may be of assistance. For a more detailed update and to keep abreast of developments in the QIDS program, please visit https://www.afhto.ca/news-events/news//qids/

  • Lessons in Leadership from the AFHTO 2013 Conference

    During the AFHTO 2013 conference, nearly 900 participants gathered to learn and explore the theme “Leadership in Healthcare for Ontarians”. Engaging sessions delving into this important theme started with the FHT Leadership session where participants discussed the role primary care leaders could and should play in Ontario’s healthcare system, continued with the opening plenary on inspirational leadership and ended with the closing debate about the affirmation, “Be it resolved that health system transformation must be led by Primary Care”. The resulting report, “Leadership in Healthcare for Ontarians- Learnings from the AFHTO 2013 Conference”, highlights and summarizes key messages from these sessions with insights from both speakers and conference participants. Primary care is built on long term relationships – with patients, within teams and with others in the community to care for these patients. This unique role fosters distinctive strengths that primary care leaders bring to the health system.  As coordinators of care who see the complete range of patient needs and social context impacting these needs, primary care leaders have the skills and drive to develop and lead meaningful partnerships that keep patients at the centre Our report illuminates the importance of primary care leadership and will inform the development of AFHTO’s Governance and Leadership Program. With new initiatives coming in the near future, we look forward to continue providing support for current and future primary care leaders and strengthening their capacity to fulfil their roles within their teams, their community and Ontario as a whole. Thank you to all who participated in the AFHTO 2013 conference.

  • Opportunity for AFHTO members to apply for QIDS Innovation Funding

    AFHTO is very pleased to announce the availability of approximately $95,000 in Quality Improvement Decision Support (QIDS) Innovation Funding. It is anticipated that three to five innovative projects will be supported through this fund. Every effort is being made to maintain a simple, yet transparent and open process for the allocation of these funds to make this opportunity serve as a catalyst for collaboration and sector capacity building. All interested members, regardless of current Quality Improvement or EMR sophistication or prior involvement with the QIDS initiative are encouraged to consider applying or joining with peers to submit an application.  Please refer to the QIDS Innovation Submission Process and Guidelines on the AFHTO members-only web-site for more detail. Note that this one-time opportunity is very time sensitive!  Interested applicants will need to notify Tim Burns, Provincial Lead, QIDS Program (tim.burns@afhto.ca) of their intent to apply by December 6, 2013.

  • QIDS Innovation Fund – notice of intent to apply due by Dec. 6

    Submission Process and Guidelines Funds available: Approx. $95,000. It is anticipated that three to five projects will be supported.   Target: AFHTO member led projects that align with the goals of the QIDS strategy.  Funding can be used for new initiatives or to expand the scope of existing projects.   General Principles: AFHTO is very pleased that the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has enabled this opportunity to use provincial QIDS program funding to create value for all of its members. Transparency, equity of access, accountability and value for money are paramount concerns as this initiative relies on public funds allocated for which the AFHTO Board is ultimately accountable. This initiative is intended serve as a catalyst for system capacity building. All members, regardless of their current QI and EMR sophistication or prior involvement in QIDS are encouraged to consider applying or partnering on applications. Although the funding is only available on a one-time basis, preference will be given to projects which promise to create enduring capacity in FHTs. This might be indicated by:

    • Strengthened partnerships, collaboration and sharing.
    • Spread of tools and capability (across organizations,  geography and EMR types).
    • Systematic barrier identification and removal.
    • The resulting availability of accessible, non-proprietary tools.
    • Potential for local cash and in-kind contributions or leverage of other funding sources.
    • Potential to build capacity through strategic partnerships with non-FHT actors.

    Eligibility criteria: To be considered for funding, projects must demonstrate their ability to accelerate progress in one or more of the following QIDS priority areas:

    • Strengthening QIDS program learning and evaluation capacity
    • Identification and spread of promising data management tools and techniques
    • Development decision support networks and communities of practice
    • Implementation of quality and performance measurement frameworks consistent with AFHTO’s Performance-Oriented Model for Primary Care (based on Starfield) for comprehensive primary care  and/or HQO’s emerging primary care performance measurement framework.  This could include enabling multi-practice baseline analysis and comparability on a sub-set of measures that are local team priorities
    • Reducing the cycle (lag) time for analytical data sets
    • Validation and documentation of existing data sources and strategies to encourage more rapid uptake
    • Accelerate implementation of multi-practice and/or system level performance measurement and feedback
    • Common approaches to QIP priorities including patient experience surveys
    • Clinician engagement
    • Identifying opportunities for patient and public input
    • Potential for non-proprietary  re-use of technical solutions (queries, API, ETL, data scrubbing, SNOMED conversion)

    Terms: To be considered, projects need to be fully underway by the end of January, 2014. Projects, or at least the AFHTO funded portions thereof, will need to achieve substantial completion by March 31, 2014. Brief mid-point and closeout narrative reports will be required. Proponents will agree to contribute to QIDS knowledge exchange events and products to the extent practical. Funding amounts and eligible project costs will be determined at AFHTO’s sole discretion. Proponents and AFHTO will enter in to a formal letter of agreement to enable funding.   Application process: The process described below is designed to create the most open opportunity possible for all members while moving very quickly to meet the need to achieve completion within the fiscal year. AFHTO is committed to fairness and transparency. Suggestions to improve this process are most welcome. Step 1. Intent to apply: It is very important to let AFHTO know if you intend to submit a proposal or have a promising project idea and need partners.  A target date of December 16 has been set for submissions. Teams considering applying are requested to send a brief email to Tim Burns (tim.burns@afhto.ca) by December 6, 2013 indicating their intent to apply.  The e-mail should include:

    • A very brief project synopsis
    • The players involved (including any to be invited)
    • Readiness to start (noting if the proposal is for a new initiative or the expansion to a project already under way)
    • A rough (+/-25%) estimate of the support likely to be requested from the AFHTO QIDS fund
    • Concerns, if any, regarding a December 16th target date for submissions (see below)

    Based on this information, AFHTO and the selection committee will finalize the submission date (as close to the December 16th target date as possible) and communicate this to all who intend to apply. AFHTO may also facilitate joint proposals if projects are similar and proponents are agreeable. Step 2. Project description submissions: Remember, this is all about streamlining. Submissions should be no more than 2-3 pages in length at most! Suggested content:

    1. Project description including the innovation opportunity and potential benefits
    2. QIDS priority(ies) being addressed
    3. Summary of deliverables and timing
    4. Project partners and organization
    5. Potential for sharing and collaboration beyond current partners if any
    6. Progress reporting and evaluation plan
    7. Knowledge sharing and dissemination
    8. Role, if any, envisaged for the provincial QIDS team
    9. Overall budget and where financial support from the AFHTO QIDS fund is required
    10. Conflict of interest declarations if applicable
    11. (optional) appendices or links to additional information

    Selection process: The review committee will rank all proposals received by December 16 (assuming this date is confirmed through the intent to apply process). Proponents may be requested to participate in a teleconference call to discuss their ideas and address questions from the selection committee. Once the proposals are ranked, up to $30,000 per proposal will be allocated in rank order until all available funding is committed. (It is possible that proposals will get either more or less funding than applied for based on the budget review and given the goal of providing meaningful support to as many projects as possible). Successful proponents will be notified within one week of submission of a final budget allocation so that projects can be initiated as soon as possible.