Ultimate Blogging Championship

Category: Uncategorized

  • CIHR Training Grant in Interdisciplinary PHC Research: applications due Oct.31

    Transdisciplinary Understanding and Training on Research– Primary Health Care — “TUTOR‐PHC” Program information and application forms for TUTOR-PHC are now available on TUTOR-PHC’s website at http://www.uwo.ca/fammed/csfm/tutor-phc/applications/applicationforms.html For more information about TUTOR-PHC, go to http://www.uwo.ca/fammed/csfm/tutor-phc/ Who should apply?

    • Graduate Students from Canadian Universities that are interested/ engaged in primary health care research regardless of their home discipline
    • Post‐doctoral fellows, policy-makers, OR clinicians* that are interested/ engaged in primary health care research

    *Clinicians can include any type of Health Professional in Primary Health Care (i.e. Physician, Nurse, Social Worker, Dietician, Occupational Therapist, etc.). Please see our website for more information. The deadline for applications is October 31, 2011 (program runs from May 2012 to April 2013).

  • Rural health care providers unite to provide optimal health services

    Wellington hospitals, Family Health Teams, Community Care Access Centres and Mental Health Services signed a collective agreement last Wednesday aimed at optimizing health and patient care in our rural communities. The local rural health partners include Groves Memorial Community Hospital, North Wellington Heath Care, Minto-Mapleton, Mount Forest and Upper Grand Family Health Teams, Waterloo Wellington Community Care Access Centre and Trellis Mental Health and Developmental Services. By entering into this agreement each partner commits to improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of health care services through collaboration, joint planning and sharing. “We are stronger working together than we could be independently,” said Jerome Quenneville, President and CEO of the Wellington Health Care Alliance. “By working together we can potentially leverage sources of funding to improve patient services.” Shirley Borges, administrator for Minto-Mapleton Family Health Team said, “Through collaboration we are able to explore sharing of health care information systems and services. This will allow all partners to enhance the current level of health care available in our rural communities.” “This agreement will strengthen the current collaborative approach and set in motion the evolution of existing capabilities and service roles to better meet the unique rural health care needs of Centre and North Wellington. The ripple effect of success in our relationship will drive further success by others,” said Lana Palmer, Executive Director, Upper Grand Family Health Team. “The agreement between our seven organizations is just a beginning.  As part of building health care access and healthier communities, in future, we hope to work more closely with public health, community support services, social services, education providers, local citizens and our local municipalities,” said Suzanne Trivers, Executive Director of the Mount Forest Family Health Team. These local rural health partners have created a working group they call “Rural Health Care of Tomorrow”. The first order of business for the group is to work with community health and social support partners to further develop the vision of coordinated health services and work toward the physical structures that will support the vision. “We are all committed to achieving and ensuring excellence in patient care,” said Kevin Mercer, CEO of the Waterloo Wellington Community Care Access Centre. “This Memorandum of Understanding helps mark a new beginning of efforts to work together to further improve service connections between our organizations.” Fred Wagner, Executive Director, Trellis Mental Health and Developmental Services said, “Those living in rural areas have a close relationship with their local health care providers. By working together we will be able to improve upon that relationship.” Posted from the Mount Forest Confederate, Sept.15, 2011

  • Tools to make your voice heard in the provincial election

    The upcoming provincial election gives each Family Health Team the perfect opportunity to build awareness about the value we deliver to our communities.  People running for office need to know (and want to know) how well their constituents are being served through their tax dollars. Why is this important?

    • To make sure all candidates running in your riding know you exist, what you do, and what your work means for the people in their riding. As many FHTs have experienced, the person who becomes your MPP can be a valuable resource for the FHT.
    • To build confidence in the added value generated by this model of care. AFHTO has met with the Health Minister and Health Critics for the three major parties.  All three acknowledged that FHTs are popular with their colleagues and constituents, but many politicians remain skeptical as to whether the results are “worth” the extra investment. The July 23 Petrolia Topic recently reported, “(NDP leader Andrea) Horwath said the NDP hopes the provincial auditor-general looks at the FHT model ‘…to make sure it’s value for money.’”

    Many FHTs are very involved with their political representatives already. To help all AFHTO members become more active, AFHTO has developed the following tools:

    • Three 3 key messages that can have stronger impact the more consistently they are used.  Family Health Teams are Ontario’s innovation in team-based care that:
      • Improves access to health care.
      • Promotes health and reduces the impact of chronic disease.
      • Has the potential to reduce the total cost of care.
    • A brochure in English (click here) and French (click here), which:
      • Delivers these three messages and provides some evidence for each.
      • Contains one page for FHTs to enter their own information.
      • Allows you to print out copies as needed to hand out to candidates and campaign workers in your riding, and leave in your waiting areas.
    • A list of candidates in each provincial riding and their contact information (click here).

    AFHTO sent out e-mails to members by riding on Aug.31/Sept.1 and on Aug.5/6, to enable coordination within ridings. AFHTO encourages you to meet your candidates and spread the good news about your FHT and the FHT model. We hope you will find these resources helpful in your communications. As always, your feedback is welcome.

  • Improving care for persons with serious mental illness

    August 31 – 6:00 PM – Toronto.  Dr. Benjamin Druss, a specialist in improving the physical health of individuals with serious mental illness will be coming to Toronto on August 31st, 2011 to do a free evening talk. This talk is focused on individuals working in the primary care field. As the  first Rosalynn Carter Chair in Mental Health at  Emory University, Dr .  Druss is working to  build linkages between mental health, general medical health, and  public health .   He works closely with  Carter Center Mental Health Program, where he is a member of the  Mental Health Task Force and Journalism Task Force.  He  has  been  a member of two  Institute of Medicine Committees, and  has  served as  an  expert consultant to  the  Substance Abuse and  Mental Health Services Administra­ tion, the  Centers for  Disease Control, and  the  Assistant Secre­ tary for  Planning and  Evaluation. Dr.  Druss’s  research focuses on  improving physical health and healthcare  among persons with  serious mental disorders .   He has published more  than 120  peer-reviewed articles on this and related topics, including the  first randomized trial of an  inter­vention to  improve medical care in this population in  2001 .   His research is funded by grants from the  National Institute  of Mental Health and  the  Agency  for  Healthcare  Quality and  Re­ search, and  he serves as  a standing  member of an  NIMH  study section .   He has  received a number of  national awards for  his work, including the  American Psychiatric  Association Early Ca­ reer Health Services Research Award, the  AcademyHealth Arti­ cle-of-the-Year Award, and  the  AcademyHealth Alice  S.  Hersh New Investigator Award. Event takes place Aug.31, 2011 @ 6 PM at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor St. W. Toronto. RSVP knicholls@schizophrenia.on.ca.

  • NEW Specialized Family Practice Nursing Program at George Brown

    Are you, or is someone you know, a Registered Nurse currently practicing or aspiring to practice in a Family Practice/Primary Care setting? If so, you will be interested to know that George Brown College now has a new postgraduate certificate program in Family Practice Nursing for Registered Nurses. Sign up for an information session to find out more about this exciting new program.

  • Supporting FHTs through strengthened relationships with Ministry and key associations

    In the past few days AFHTO has had meetings with the Ministry’s FHT Unit, the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) and the Association of Ontario Health Centres (AOHC). In all cases primary care is recognized as key to improving quality of care for patients and sustainability of the health system.  FHTs are recognized for their potential to significantly advance both quality and sustainability. With the FHT Unit we examined how we work together to support FHTs in achieving these ends.  In particular we focussed on how to progress in strengthening FHT governance, recruitment and retention, and capacity to get the full benefit from EMRs and data for quality care. Getting traction requires stepping forward in bite-size chunks:

    • To develop governance capacity, the FHT Unit is developing an RFP as the first step in response to AFHTO’s detailed proposal for web-based learning modules on the core set of knowledge and skills required for governance, strategic planning and risk management.
    • The framework for FHT governance is likely to be shaped by the Ministry’s “Strengthening Primary Care” initiative. AFHTO has been participating in the working groups, along with a number of other stakeholders.
    • With recruitment and retention, the next step is to understand the patterns and drivers underlying vacancy rates.  AFHTO has struck a working group that will look into questions such as time to recruit, turnover, and reasons for leaving. Working in partnership with AOHC and HOOPP, AFHTO has compiled comparative data on compensation packages.
    • Supporting use of EMRs and data is a more complex undertaking. AFHTO has exchanged ideas with some thought leaders from within the FHTs and from key organizations such as the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), and Health Quality Ontario (HQO).  This may crystallize into another proposal in 6 – 9 months’ time.

    The FHT Unit continues to look to AFHTO to assemble small groups of FHT volunteers to provide feedback on implementation issues such as the revised NP-SERT program (renamed Nurse Practitioner Access Reporting or NPAR)  and the new SRI templates replacing WERS. With the OHA our focus was on what our respective associations could do to foster greater understanding and collaboration among hospitals, primary care and other key components such as CCACs. With the OMA and AFHTO we discussed a number of ideas for working together to strengthen primary care. This exploration will continue in a meeting with NPAO in a few weeks, and other associations over the course of the summer. Ideas are percolating. Some will result in highly stimulating content for the 2011 AFHTO Conference on Oct. 25-26. Other interesting collaborations are likely to emerge. Stay tuned.

  • Citizens’ Reference Panel calls for expansion of family health teams in Ontario

    Twenty-eight Ontarians who have looked at the inner-workings of the province’s health system recommend more collaboration, integration and accountability to help ensure the sustainability of high-quality, accessible and publicly-funded health care. One of these recommendations states, “We urge the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to accelerate the expansion of integrated family health teams throughout the province.” The report, released on June 22, 2011, was commissioned by PwC (formerly called PricewaterhouseCoopers). They invited 28 randomly-selected citizens from across the province to meet over three weekends in Toronto from April-June 2011. One male and one female panel member was selected from each of the 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) and with the age profile matching that of the population distribution of the province. This process and their discussions were facilitated by public engagement company, MASS LBP. Their recommendations can be summarized into five themes (below). Click here for links for the entire report and executive summary .

    1. Improve Accountability and Incentives. Link compensation for physicians to measurable patient outcomes and satisfaction, encourage health professionals to form interdisciplinary primary health teams, expand reporting in hospitals that measure quality and patient satisfaction.
    2. Strengthen Community Care. Requires strengthening of partnerships, mobilization of volunteers, creation of patient and community support groups, reduce cyclical funding constraints, prepare for an aging population with new resources for community services that keep people at home.
    3. Improve Access and Timeliness. Expand family health team models. Utilize nurse practitioners more widely in primary care clinics and emergency departments, and develop a centralized specialist referral system.
    4. Expedite eHealth and improve information-sharing. Communicate the importance of eHealth while addressing access and privacy issues.
    5. Step up Prevention and Promotion. Direct a share of alcohol and tobacco taxes towards health promotion. Expand nutrition and phys-ed in schools, more public education on active living, better food labeling.

  • Complexity of Care study in FHTs with BSM physicians – confirm participation by July 4, 2011

    Are CFHTs different from the wider FHT sector?  Is the difference more than just the governance model?  Now you can find out. The Association of Ontario Health Centres (AOHC) and the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario (AFHTO) invite FHTs who have physicians on the blended salary model to participate in a research project to determine the complexity of care and the individual characteristics of your patients and how it compares to other primary healthcare models across Ontario. This project is in collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).  The objective is to describe the patients that you see and to quantify the social and medical complexity of your patients. The need to demonstrate how numerous influences make a patient more or less complex is vital for CFHTs to enable them to demonstrate the important role they play in the provision of primary health care. Why would you participate in this research study?

    • To produce a socio-demographic profile, a case-mix description, and a performance report for each CFHTs in Ontario which use the BSM payment model;
    • To understand better the patterns of health care service delivery to your patients and populations with differing needs;
    • To match health care resources more closely with health care needs;
    • To enable you to advocate for your practice and tell your CFHT story.

    How will it be completed?

    • guidelines of PHIPA will be followed and research ethics approval will be received before this project begins.
    • Data sharing agreements will be signed so that we can have access to your data.
    • AOHC will sign a data sharing agreement for all interested AOHC members
    • Individual data sharing agreements will be signed with FHTs who are not members of AOHC
    • a small data set will be required that includes the patient’s health card number, postal code, date of birth, gender, diagnoses over a two year period.
    • data will be analyzed at ICES and detailed individual reports will be prepared for each participating CFHT; Data will only be used for the intended purposes.

    What is the cost?

    • No cost for AOHC members who have paid at least half of their annual dues.
    • $1200 for non-AOHC members: this will recover the costs of data management, generating all SAS code and the production of a final report.
    • ICES provides services and charges that are established on a cost-recovery basis.

    What will each CFHT receive? Report will include:

    • tables comparing the aggregate CFHT information with the comparison models (CHCs, FHTs, FHNs, FHOs, FHGs, Not-Enrolled).
    • Socio-demographic characteristics of the individual CFHT clients including age, sex, urban-rural residence, area-level income, newcomers with OHIP registration within ten years, and those receiving medications through welfare, disability, and seniors with low income.
    • comparison comorbidity characteristics (previous acute myocardial infarction (AMI), Congestive heart failure (CHF), hypertension, asthma, COPD, mental health, mean resource utilization bands and the number of aggregate diagnostic groups (a measure of comorbidity).
    • comparison of emergency department utilization by triage level, avoidable hospital admissions and chronic disease prevention and management.

    Outcomes will be presented in relation to those expected given each CFHT’s demographics and case mix. Data for each CFHT will be made available to that CFHT. No individual-level data will be provided or reported at the level of patients. How much time will it take? June 21- September 30: June 21:               You are invited to participate in a no obligation webinar that will outline the study.  You will have an opportunity to ask questions By July 4:             We need your response as to whether you will participate; upon confirmation that you will participate, we will send data sharing agreements to sign and return July 2011:            We will require you to extract data from your clinical management software (assistance provided by Jennifer Rayner, Regional Decision Support Specialist in the Southwest region) Aug 2011:            Analysis by ICES (no time or work for you and your centre) By Sept 30:          Reports will be prepared and delivered to your CFHT Why are only CFHTs operating with a Blended Salary Model included? We are extracting data from the patient encounters because your data does not get shadow-billed through OHIP. This type of analysis is already being conducted at ICES for other models. This project will enable you to get access to this data for your centre.

  • Congratulations to 4 AFHTO members profiled in Health Quality Ontario’s 2011 Report

    Four AFHTO members are profiled in two Success Studies found in Quality Monitor 2011 Report on Ontario’s Health System, released today:

    The 2011 Report covers eight Success Studies. These four FHTs have the distinction of being the only primary care organizations that are profiled.  They join two FHTS profiled in HQO’s 2010 Report – Athens FHT (http://www.afhto.ca/news/fht-success-stories/succes-story-post/ ) and New Vision FHT (http://www.afhto.ca/news/fht-success-story-2-2/ ). This is but a sample of the excellent progress many FHTs have made in improving care for their patients. For a full copy of Quality Monitor 2011 Report on Ontario’s Health System, go to http://www.hqontario.ca/pdfs/2011_report_-_english.pdf (or for French language, go to http://www.hqontario.ca/pdfs/2011_report_-_french.pdf ).   For a summary of findings about primary care in Ontario, see pages 12-13 of the Report.

  • AFHTO 2011 Conference – Workshop submissions due July 15

    Family Health Teams are a unique innovation in primary care – there is so much for all of us to learn and to celebrate. Whether you have been a FHT for 5 years or 5 months, you have valuable experiences to share with other FHTs. We invite FHTs to submit abstracts for workshops, oral presentations, or posters you would like to present to your peers on Day 2 of the conference, October 26, 2011. The 2011 Conference starts at noon Tuesday, October 25 and ends at 4:00 PM Wednesday, October 26 at the Westin Prince Hotel, 900 York Mills Road, Toronto. Day 1 is focused on FHT leadership – the skills, tools, policy challenges and action planning needed to strengthen leadership within FHTs – followed by AFHTO’s Annual General Meeting and board elections at 4:30 and a celebration dinner at 6:30.  Day 2 focuses on innovation and best practice – featuring keynote presentations, concurrent workshops and posters and displays on key themes (see below). Abstracts for Day 2 should be focused on one or more of the following key themes: 1. Achieving Patient Access: Quality and Targets 2. Implementing Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Management 3. Building Team Collaboration 4. Optimizing EMR/Information Technology 5. Reducing Hospitalizations 6. Planning, Measuring and Governing for Quality Improvement 7. Building Community Linkages and Partnerships To submit an abstract for a workshop, oral presentation, or poster you would like to deliver on Day 2, October 26, please click here. PLEASE NOTE:

    • Deadline for submission:              July 15, 2011
    • Notification of acceptance:           August 31, 2011
    • All presenters must register and pay the conference fee.

    Fees are as follows:

    • Day 2 – Innovation & Best Practice:  Members $275 / Non-members $550
    • Day 1 – Leadership Retreat (for AFHTO Members only): $150
    • 2-Day Conference (AFHTO Members only): $325
    • Dinner and Celebration of FHTs:  Members $50 / Non-members $80

    Click here to register for the conference. Click here to access the Westin Prince Hotel to book, modify or cancel hotel reservations.