Ultimate Blogging Championship

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  • Primary Care Practice Reports available for FHT Executive Directors

    Health Quality Ontario has informed us they are launching team-level access to ICES data for Executive Directors. There is also the possibility of using them to access data for D2D. Discussions are underway to confirm this possibility which will make it that much easier for your team to contribute data to D2D 3.0. The consent page is now live with a deadline of October 30th, 2015 for delivery to teams by mid-December. Please sign up using your official email address to make registration easier (as this should match Ministry records). For further information please see below. …………………………………………………………….. Everyone providing primary care to Ontarians is dedicated to quality improvement. Now, Executive Directors working in Family Health Teams have access to team-level data as well as trends and change ideas through Health Quality Ontario’s group-level Primary Care Practice Report. These team-level  reports will provide you with information on your team’s demographics, case mix, patterns of patient use of service, the health status of your practice population, and information on specific chronic disease management indicators, as well as related quality improvement change ideas. They share how your Family Health Team is performing compared to other teams in your Local Health Integration Network and across the province. They do not have physician-level data but they do have data at the level of the physician group (e.g. FHN, FHO). Physicians can get their own data through a similar process (see below). Primary Care Practice Reports are confidential. Your team’s reports will not be shared with others. It can be used to inform quality improvement work and your Quality Improvement Plans. Before you sign up, inform the physicians in your practice that you’ll be receiving a report with aggregate data for the team. Then sign up to receive your report by visiting HQO’s website. You will receive your first report in December. These Primary Care Practice Reports, which are now being introduced for Executive Directors, have been and still are available to individual physicians who work in primary care and long-term care settings. Encourage physicians working in your Family Health Team to sign up to receive their personalized Primary Care Practice Report. They can also watch this video to hear from family physicians already using this report to help drive change in their practice. The Primary Care Practice Report has been created by Health Quality Ontario and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, in partnership with the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario.

  • Access to team-level ICES data: Instructions

    AFHTO is VERY pleased to share the news that HQO is launching team-level access to ICES data for Executive Directors! The sign-up process is now open. START PREPARING FOR THIS NOW. Schedule discussions with physicians and Boards as needed to establish the necessary internal permissions to sign up for these reports. The sign-up process on the HQO portal will require the ED to indicate that they have informed the physicians in their team and that none object. This is the same level and type of permission that was involved in accessing ICES data for D2D 1.0 and 2.0. If you have any questions about the permission process, please contact Carol Mulder. We are happy to confirm that the portal will be used for teams to access their ICES data for D2D 3.0.  Five of the eight D2D 3.0 indicators will come from the Primary Care Practice report, whereas the other three D2D indicators will be placed in a side report. More details to follow. The sign-up process is now open. Sign up to receive your report by visiting HQO’s website.  The sign-up process to get your ICES data for D2D 3.0 closes October 30, 2015.  Those teams that sign up by October 30th will get their data by mid-December.   Sign up for the report by following these steps:

    • Go to the  HQO Portal
    • Click on the consent button and select the consent option for Executive Directors of Family Health Teams
    • Complete the consent form by:
      1. Selecting your FHT form a dropdown menu
      2. De-select any PEM groups with physicians who have objected to the ED’s request for this data (like D2D, the consent requires EDs to inform all physicians and only request data for groups that did not object)
      3. Providing their names, email addresses (please use your formal organizational emails)
      4. Read the consent form
      5. Check the “I agree” box
      6. Click submit

  • Data to Decisions eBulletin #18: Accessing your team’s ICES data

    Start the sign-up process to get team-level access to your ICES data. Click here for instructions. Progress in measuring our capacity to serve all patients: Click here (scroll down to the “human resource capacity” section) for information about emerging considerations for this new indicator for D2D 3.0. Patient contact system: Learn how the patient contact system is helping 5 teams automatically do patients surveys directly from their EMRs. Nightingale EMR data extraction: Thanks to the efforts of their Community of Practice, all Nightingale EMR users now have access to Data Miner to extract data!  Contact Marg Leyland for information about training. AFHTO at Health Quality Transformation: Come see AFHTO’s posters about working with patients as partners and increasing access to EMR data at Health Quality Transformation 2015 – it’s free! New addition to AFHTO: Welcome to Catherine Macdonald as the new QIDS Program & Governance and Leadership Program Assistant, stepping in as we bid a fond farewell to Denise Pinto who supported our programs from the very beginning! Help spread the word about D2D. Invite others to sign up for the eBulletin online.  What is D2D? Data to Decisions (D2D) is a member-wide summary of performance on indicators that are both possible for members to measure and that are meaningful to members. See the D2D page on AFHTO’s website for more information.

  • Deputy Minister Bob Bell now confirmed for the AFHTO 2015 Conference!

    Throughout the AFHTO 2015 conference, we’ll explore the many ways in which team-based primary care is the foundation of a sustainable health system and the diverse approaches teams are taking to strengthen that foundation. All this work takes place within a larger system so to wrap it up we ask – what’s the government’s vision and direction for primary care in Ontario? And how exactly do we move forward from its current state? Our closing plenary panel discusses this and takes your questions about how best to deliver high-quality, team-based care to all Ontarians who would best benefit from it, what factors affect our ability to deliver such care, and how we can do it in a way that achieves the best value.

    Our panel of experts includes:

    • Dr. Bob Bell, Deputy Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
    • Dr. Sean Blaine, incoming AFHTO President; Lead Physician, STAR FHT (Stratford)
    • Mr. Paul Huras, CEO, South East LHIN
    • Ms. Kavita Mehta, Executive Director, South East Toronto FHT; past president of AFHTO
    • Dr. Cathy Faulds, OCFP President; Lead Physician, London FHT

    Given the challenges and opportunities currently facing the health system, this promises to be a spirited and fruitful discussion. Don’t miss out on your chance to be a part of this conversation!

    Register now for the AFHTO 2015 Conference. Early-bird discounts end September 28.

    The conference also includes:

    And our pre-conference sessions (exclusively for and free to AFHTO members):

    Members receive 50% off registration. Contact your administrator for the access code.

    This program has been accredited by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Ontario Chapter for up to 17 Mainpro-M1 credits. Attendance at this program entitles certified Canadian College of Health Leaders members (CHE / Fellow) to 2.5 Category II credits for Oct 27th Governance in Primary Care; 1.5 Category II credits for Oct 28th pre-conference (Leadership and IHP Sessions); 4 Category II credits for the Conference towards for their maintenance of certification requirement.

  • Family Health Teams participating in “Bundled Care” – a funding model aiming to improve care coordination

    Sep. 2 – Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins announced provincial funding for an expanded pilot to provide for patients’ care needs using an approach called bundled care. Taking place in six communities across Ontario, the aim is to help people transition more smoothly from the hospital into their homes. Also known as an “integrated funding model”, with this approach a single payment is provided to a group of health care providers to cover care for an individual patient both in the hospital and at home. Most of their health care team will remain the same, with services coordinated around their needs. This should decrease emergency department visits and lower the risk of readmission. The announcement was made as part of the Ministry’s Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care. In February, changing funding models was outlined as one way to improve the delivery of better coordinated and integrated care. A commitment to proceed with bundled care was also made in Patients First: A Roadmap to Strengthen Home and Community Care in May. Since care coordination is a fundamental role of primary care, this pilot has implications for interprofessional primary care teams whose collaborations with health care partners would be impacted by this change. AFHTO members North York FHT and Thames Valley FHT are currently taking part in these groups which also include such diverse health care organizations as hospitals, community care access centres, Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN). The bundled care approach has been piloted at St. Joseph’s Health System in Hamilton since 2011. Results show hospital stays have been reduced by up to 33 per cent and rates of readmission within 60 days to any hospital have decreased by 56 per cent. The program is also saving up to $4,000 per patient. The province plans to continue the program’s expansion, supporting additional teams in different areas across Ontario within the next year. AFHTO looks forward to learning more about the results of these projects and what they mean for our members. For further information, you can read:

  • D2D 3.0 Data Dictionary

    The data dictionary version 4  describes indicators for D2D 3.0 and includes some changes from the initial set of indicators reported in D2D 1.0 and D2D 2.0. The definitions and data sources for these indicators are based on the Primary Care Performance Measurement Framework (PCPMF) wherever possible.

    Although the goal is to not have multiple versions of the data dictionary, it is inevitable that there will be at least one update in the future to incorporate the finalized expanded indicators. To ensure that you have the most updated version, please clear your cache before opening the PDF.

    Please ensure that you are working with Version 4 of the data dictionary.

    For help in data extraction and submission, please contact local QIDSS or the provincial QIDS program staff via carol.mulder@afhto.ca.

  • Decisions from Data: Progress from D2D 1.0 to 2.0

    Summary of the Report

    These analyses summarize progress of AFHTO members in their journey to advance manageable meaningful measurement, largely as represented by Data to Decisions.  Data to Decisions (D2D) is a summary report of performance on a small number of measures that AFHTO members identified as being meaningful and possible to measure.

    Comparison of D2D 2.0 to 1.0: Highlights

    AFHTO members have made big progress in using data to measure and improve performance since October 2014 when D2D 1.0 was released.

    • Team Characteristics: There are better scores on team climate and changes in goal orientation
    • EMR use: There is increased data standardization despite no change in EMR functionality
    • Quality Improvement (QI) activity: There are more frequent conversations with physicians and boards about QI and performance
    • Physician ambassadors: There is a higher awareness of them and an association with increased QI activity and better team characteristics
    • Performance: There is no change in performance on the core D2D indicators from 1.0 to 2.0, which is not surprising since much of the data is from 2013-14 (i.e. before the release of D2D).

    Next steps: DECISIONS from DATA

    Section 4 presents a complete list of decisions for action based on the data analyzed herein. The actions cover topics such as:

    • Team characteristics: Identify factors and strategies contributing to team climate changes and physician ambassadors that could be spread to more teams
    • EMR use: Develop additional mechanisms to increase EMR functionality and expand data standardization
    • QI activity: Create even more conversations about QI and performance, especially with physicians and Boards
    • Performance: Track progress over time.
    • General: Increase participation in D2D and related surveys.

    Data sources

    This report is based on data from the first iterations of D2D (i.e. D2D 1.0 and 2.0) and the first iterations of the pre-D2D surveys (i.e. prior to release of D2D 1.0 and 2.0) as well as a survey of QIDS specialists after the release of D2D 1.0.  Approximately half of the membership participated in the D2D 2.0 with about one quarter to one third contributing to D2D 1.0 and the ED surveys, respectively.  Response rate for QIDS specialists was nearly 90%.

  • Historical Data: Review your data here

    You can view the data submitted by your team for D2D 1.0 and D2D 2.0. Enter your team code below and select which reporting period you would like to view. [input_data]

  • Data to Decisions eBulletin #17: AFHTO making progress since D2D 1.0

    We have made progress since D2D 1.0! Decisions from Data: Progress from D2D 1.0 to 2.0 report takes a look at our journey to advance manageable meaningful measurement.

    Make sure D2D makes clinical sense: Click here to join the conversation with fellow clinicians and/or see progress on development of indicators for ED visits, follow-up after hospitalization and more. The COPD query to build a registry from your EMR can now be run on OSCAR – in addition to Accuro and Telus PS! New! View all your D2D data on the new D2D Historical Data webpage (NOTE: This page is temporarily disabled while we prepare for the launch of D2D 3.0, coming on December 3). You can view the data submitted by your team for D2D 1.0 and D2D 2.0. Spreading knowledge: Has your team found something that works in using data to improve? Drop us a line so other teams can learn with and from you. Help spread the word. Invite others to sign up for the eBulletin online.  What is D2D? Data to Decisions (D2D) is a member-wide summary of performance on indicators that are both possible for members to measure and that are meaningful to members. See the D2D page on AFHTO’s website for more information.

  • EDAC Phone Meeting Results Report

    It is anticipated the Ontario government will introduce important developments in the evolution of primary care over the summer. In order to help prepare FHTs and NPLCs for the changes that lay ahead, AFHTO interviewed nineteen members of EDAC to obtain a better understanding of the primary care landscape and relationships that currently exist. The results from these interviews were presented to EDAC on July 28, 2015. The finding from the interviews are also outlined in a summary report.

    Resources: