Ultimate Blogging Championship

Author: sitesuper

  • Links on Health Promotion and Illness Prevention

    The following is a selection of the many sites that contain information and resources for patients:

    General Health Information

    Canadian Living Fraser Health Health Canada Healthy Ontario Take Heart Algoma Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario Medline Plus – Interactive Health Tutorials NHS Scotland Northern Health Ontario Ministry of Health Promotion Public Health Agency of Canada Vancouver Coastal Health

    Women’s Health

    The Canadian Women’s Health Network Women’s Health Matters

    Children’s Health

    Asthma Society of Canada Caring for Kids Child & Family Research Institute Physical Activity Kids Health Ontario Early Years Centres also offers many resources and programs for parents with young children (0-6).

    Healthy Eating

    5 to 10 a Day for Better Health Dietitians of Canada Eat Right Ontario Health Canada Interior Health – Nutrition Over the Life Cycle Your Digestive Health

    Physical Activity

    Active 2010 Government of Canada Health Canada Public Health Agency of Canada

    Healthy Living

    ActNowBC BC Health Guide Healthy People Living in Healthy Communities Healthy U Prevention Trails for Health

    Smoking Cessation

    The Lung Association Ontario Ministry of Health Promotion Smokers Help Line Tobacco Free RNAO Smoking and Pregnancy

    Persons with Disabilities

    Service Canada Persons with Disabilities

  • Link to resources on team development

    Please find below toolkits and resources to support FHTs with team development:

     

  • Link to resources on improving access to care

    Please find below toolkits and resources to support FHTs with improving access to care:

    Health Quality Ontario (HQO) – Supporting QI in Primary Care

  • Customized Insurance Coverage for Family Health Teams

    Please find below an offer for customized insurance coverage for AFHTO member Family Health Teams from Stevenson & Hunt. This offer comes as a result of their participation in a vendor pilot with AFHTO’s Commercial Advisory Council (CAC). The pilot program’s goal was to test a methodology for vetting partnership opportunities for goods and services for members at discounted rates and/or with other benefits specifically for AFHTO members.  Although the CAC process has been suspended – the investment in time and legal costs was found to be high relative to AFHTO’s more pressing priorities – the pilot did result in this opportunity for members. ****************************************************************************** Stevenson & Hunt currently insures over 150 health care clinics and offers a program to address the financial challenges, risks and liabilities unique to FHTs.  They customized their program after consulting with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, a highly regarded legal team, AFHTO and several other health care associations. The program offers FHTs core coverage to meet the Ministry’s requirements, as well as many other benefits, some of which include:

    • Expert risk management advice from experienced brokers
    • Access to our in-house Claims Division, including immediate legal advice for medical malpractice situations
    • Specialized coverage: Vicarious Liability for Physicians, Primary Professional Liability for Allied Health Professionals, Directors & Officers Liability, Employment Practices Liability, and EMR Cyber Risk Protection
    • Reduced premiums

    Contact their dedicated Health Care Division to request a review of your present coverage on a no cost/no obligation basis: Cathy Lauzon                                         Nancy Waller 519-963-3520                                        519-963-3530 800.265.5956 ext.3520                          800.265.5956 ext.3530 cathy.lauzon@sthunt.com.            nancy.waller@sthunt.com Stevenson and Hunt Insurance Brokers Limited 400-250 York St.  London ON  N6A 6K2 www.sthunt.com

  • The Institute of Medicine publishes CEO Checklist for High-Value Health Care

    Participants in the IOM Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care have assembled lessons in A CEO Checklist for High-Value Health Care to describe touchstone principles, illustrated with case examples, central to sustaining and reinforcing continuous improvement in the face of rapidly increasing pressures, demands, and market changes.

    The Checklist’s 10 items reflect the strategies to improving quality and reducing costs. They describe the foundational, infrastructure, care delivery, and feedback components of a system oriented around value, and represent basic opportunities for health care delivery system CEOs and Boards to improve the value of health care in their institutions.

    A Checklist for High-Value Health Care

  • Primary Care Nursing Task Force Report

    The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario launched a task force, bringing together key stakeholders to review the role of almost 4,300 primary care nurses (RNs and RPNs) currently practising in Ontario.

    The Task Force focused on two progressive phases of outcomes.

    1. The first phase identifies the highest level of RN and RPN scope of practice utilization already present in selected primary care settings in Ontario and recommends an upward harmonization of scope of practice utilization for all primary care nurses, across all sites in Ontario.
    2. The second phase involves identifying needed expansions to the existing scope of practice of the primary care RN and RPN that would serve to further improve access to primary care for the public. The recommendations for the second phase focus on the mechanisms required to achieve the proposed scope of practice expansions.

    Click here to read the report

     

  • Ontario Think Tank on Public Health and Primary Care Collaboration

    Please find the proceedings from a full day Think Tank on strengthening collaboration between public health and primary care held on April 19, 2012 at the offices of Public Health Ontario in Toronto, Ontario.

    AFHTO’s Executive Director, Angie Heydon, participated in the Think Tank. Other participants included policy makers, decision-makers, front line practitioners and academics. They represented Ontario Ministry of Health and LongTerm Care staff, as well as PC, PH, Medical, Nursing, and Nurse Practitioner Associations, and National organizations. Multi-disciplinary perspectives were also well represented. See the participant list in Appendix E.

    Click here for Ontario think tank highlights, April 19, 2012 (PDF)

  • FHT Practice Solutions EMR User Group Priorities – June 2012 survey results

    The purpose of this survey was to identify priority issues common to all FHTs using Practice Solutions (PSS). The survey was distributed to all FHTs that had reported through a previous AFHTO survey that they use PSS in their clinics (n=57 FHTs).

    There were 3 elements to the survey:

    • Identify common issues across FHTs
    • Prioritize action items to focus the user group when working on common issues for FHTs
    • Feedback on “Account Manager” proposal

    Please find below the PSS User Group report on FHT PSS Priorities. It presents a list of the 10 most common issues experienced by PSS Users in terms of frequency of the problem and its detrimental impact on FHT operations.

    Following from these, the PSS Users identified the following four items as the priorities for action:

    1. Data Extraction: FHTs are interested in extracting data to inform quality improvement initiatives. Health Quality Ontario is defining data requirements for quality reporting. The user group will seek support from PSS to assist FHTs in accessing usable data.
    2. Interfaces (eg. Lab, e-prescriptions): FHTs are and will be involved in health systems planning and innovation, the EMR should be innovative as well. The user group would work with PSS to determine what works needs to move ahead, and what work needs to wait for province-wide or LHIN-wide rollouts.
    3. Communications: FHTs would like to have a single point of contact within PSS who will have the authority and ability to speak for FHT issues and will coordinate priority issues for FHT clients.
    4. FHT Working Environment: The user group will work with PSS to increase their awareness of and responsiveness to the fact that the FHT working environment is different from that for physicians working in more traditional environments.

    The report also indicates almost unanimous support among the responding PSS Users for an “Account Manager” approach to solving many of these issues.

     

     

  • D2D 5.0 testing

    [review_data]

  • Priority issues identified by PSS users in Family Health Teams

    Click here to access the PSS User Group report on FHT PSS Priorities. It presents a list of the 10 most common issues experienced by PSS Users in terms of frequency of the problem and its detrimental impact on FHT operations.

    Following from these, the PSS Users identified the following four items as the priorities for action:

    1. Data Extraction: FHTs are interested in extracting data to inform quality improvement initiatives. Health Quality Ontario is defining data requirements for quality reporting. The user group will seek support from PSS to assist FHTs in accessing usable data.
    2. Interfaces (eg. Lab, e-prescriptions): FHTs are and will be involved in health systems planning and innovation, the EMR should be innovative as well. The user group would work with PSS to determine what works needs to move ahead, and what work needs to wait for province-wide or LHIN-wide rollouts.
    3. Communications: FHTs would like to have a single point of contact within PSS who will have the authority and ability to speak for FHT issues and will coordinate priority issues for FHT clients.
    4. FHT Working Environment: The user group will work with PSS to increase their awareness of and responsiveness to the fact that the FHT working environment is different from that for physicians working in more traditional environments.

    This report was sent as the “Prioritized list” to OntarioMD CEO Brian Forster, as he requested, and to Dennis Ferencz (OMD’s head for change management and the peer leader program) whom Brian identified as AFHTO’s key contact.  Brian and Dennis will go through the list. OntarioMD has identified the following tactics for moving forward with the results:

    • For issues that indicate PSS is failing to meet any of the standards for the latest spec, OMD can send them a “cure letter”. If they don’t meet the spec, then their status is suspended and the vendor can’t proceed with any further installations.
    • If the issue is not related to the current specs, OMD could potentially add requirements to future specs to deal with it.
    • For other issues – e.g. finding solutions to common operational needs, addressing overall poor communications – OMD can use its relationship to add more pressure to get problems solved.
    • At the same time, OMD + the user group could go through staff of CMA + CMA Holdings (Brian Peter is President) to apply pressure.  (Apparently some PSS physicians have threatened to drop their CMA membership over this issue. If the other avenues fail, perhaps this threat could be organized more widely and escalated if needed.)

    The FHT PSS User Group will receive all updates on developments with OntarioMD and PSS.