The AFHTO Board is very pleased to announce D2D 1.0 — Data to Decisions: Advancing Primary Care— a summary presentation of member-selected indicators. We invite your participation in this exciting and ambitious initiative. What is Data to Decisions 1.0: Advancing Primary Care?

• D2D 1.0 is about getting started with the data that matter most. It will present a small number of indicators that are meaningful, comparable and currently available
• It will be an early report containing useful and meaningful data because is being defined by members’ priorities for measurement and quality improvement
• Participation in D2D 1.0 is completely voluntary – all members will be invited but NOT required to contribute data
• D2D 1.0 will help AFHTO advocate for and inform measurement in ways that make sense to interprofessional primary healthcare organizations
• The work is being led by the Indicators Working Group of the Quality Improvement Decision Support Steering Committee (QSC) and supported by Quality Improvement Decision Support  Specialists (QIDSS)
• D2D 1.0 is coming soon! The target delivery date is October 2014

How can I participate?

• D2D 1.0 will build on AFHTO member advice and input at each critical stage in its development including data readiness, extraction, report design and lessons learned
• Vote on the indicators: In late April, watch for and participate in the online survey (and possibly webinar) to select the short list of indicators to be included in D2D 1.0
• Contribute your data: Start the conversations within your team to get ready to contribute your data so you can see where you land among your peer teams when D2D 1.0 is released.

How do I find out more?

• Review the Frequently Asked Questions
• Connect with your QIDS Specialist – they are actively involved in this project and need your input!  Send comments, questions and suggestions to:
  • QIDS Provincial Lead (AFHTO) Carol Mulder carol.mulder@afhto.ca

With a budget expected in early May and the potential for an election this spring or summer, we need to ensure that MPPs, candidates and senior officials of all of the political parties are well-educated on the value of interprofessional comprehensive primary care teams, and the benefits of expanding access, enhancing value and enabling recruitment of the staff needed to deliver care. Last week AFHTO used the occasion of the 10^th Anniversary of the announcement of Family Health Teams to kick off our campaign, “Better Care. Healthier Families. Best Value.” As a result of our work, the Minister of Health also used the event to attribute much of their success in health care to the work being done by family care teams – FHTs, NPLCs and other interprofessional models — in Ontario. In the next week, we’ll meet with senior political officials to encourage them to make the expansion and enhancement of family care teams a priority. We’re also mailing a brochure to every MPP in the province. We need members to help keep up the momentum. We encourage you to book a meeting with your local MPP and election candidates as soon as possible. To make it as easy as possible, we have e-mailed documents to members to support your efforts:

• A slide presentation that you can use to guide your meeting. (Note that we’ve left space for you to insert local successes and challenges).
• A PDF of the brochure (click here) that you can print to use in your meetings or in other ways appropriate to your community.

We have also e-mailed the following two documents. Members can contact info@afhto.ca to receive a copy:

• A key messages document to ensure we’re giving consistent messages across the province.
• A spreadsheet that lists the riding and MPP contact information for each AFHTO member, sorted by member name and by riding.

We’re also scheduling an all-member web meeting to give you an update on Ontario’s political landscape, what we’re hearing in our meetings, and answer your questions. The e-mail was sent out by riding to help members in the same riding to connect and coordinate efforts. AFHTO is happy to help your group coordinate if needed – just contact info@afhto.ca. (Note: Our list of AFHTO members by riding is based on administrative office addresses. Please let us know If your organization operates in more than one riding, or send us the postal codes of your other locations and we’ll work it out for you.) If we are going to protect the improvements we’ve made to primary care in Ontario we need to ensure that more people are aware of the benefits that family care teams bring to patients, government and providers. Please keep us updated on your progress by emailing info@afhto.ca. Sincerely, Keri Selkirk, President (and Executive Director, Thames Valley FHT) Angie Heydon, Executive Director Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario

HQO’s Analysis of 2013-14 Primary Care QIPs Now Available AFHTO has just learned that Health Quality Ontario has posted Primary Care Quality Improvement Plans: Analysis for Improvement 2013-14 .  Although your 2014-15 QIPs are likely at very advanced stages of completion, we felt it was important to draw this resource to your attention. QIDS Privacy Resources Now Posted: Thanks to 102 members who participated in the “Overcoming privacy issues in partnership agreements” webinar led by Kate Dewhirst of DDO.  If you were unable to participate or want to review it click here to access the entire webinar. Also posted are:

• Presentation (slide deck): Overcoming privacy issues in partnership agreements (PDF)
• The QIDS Privacy Toolkit (PDF)
• A template Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialist Collaboration and Data-Sharing Agreement (Word)

Next Steps on Privacy: This work has benefited greatly from your comments, suggestions and real world feedback.  It helps stage for collaboration within and between FHTs by helping members to navigate underlying privacy and data sharing considerations. Additional privacy-related questions have arisen. Please be assured they have all been logged and will be followed up. We hope that you will continue to make us aware of barriers and challenges and share your learning with us. We will continue to update members on this work.

QIDS Privacy Toolkit Now Available The QIDS Privacy Toolkit is ready for members’ use. This toolkit, prepared by Dykeman Dewhirst O’Brien LLP (DDO Health Law), aims to provide information on how to best navigate privacy issues in the Quality Improvement Decision Support Program. ALSO: Memorandum of Understanding for Collaboration and Data-Sharing (Updated) Thank you to all our members who provided feedback on the MOU that was shared earlier this month. Please see the final template here: Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialist Collaboration and Data-Sharing Agreement.

Reminder: register for this Friday’s webinar: Overcoming Privacy Issues in Partnership Agreements If you haven’t already done so, please register now for the webinar: “Overcoming privacy issues in partnership agreements” on Friday, March 21, 2014 at 9 am to 10 am EST.

• Click here for Kate Dewhirst’s presentation from the webinar

The webinar will be recorded and posted on the AFHTO members only web page shortly after the session.

AFHTO, AOHC and NPAO will be meeting with the Premier’s staff later this week in our continuing advocacy for sufficient funding to enable interprofessional primary care organizations to recruit and retain the staff needed to care for patients.  So far we have had positive meetings with the political staff in the offices of the Minister of Health and Minister of Finance — all seem to understand the situation and see our request as ‘reasonable’. The challenge of course, is finding funds in the face of many competing needs and demands. The crisis in primary care is building. This morning we have sent a joint letter to the Health and Finance Ministers on this issue, following up on the letter we sent in January. Today’s letter was prompted by the recent developments in new NP positions for LTC facilities. Adding these to the new positions in Health Links and CCACs, we are seeing an exodus of NPs to better-compensated opportunities. While this morning’s letter illustrates the competitive crisis that has emerged for NPs, we are reinforcing the message about the critical need for competitive salaries for all primary care staff. Please continue to send in your stories (click here to see previous message) and thank you to those who have already done so.  These stories make the case personal and compelling. Your support has been critical to this advocacy work – beginning with the surveys and input that lead to our joint report and recommendations.  In the coming weeks we will be asking you to participate in pre-election advocacy in your ridings. As we promote the value delivered by interprofessional comprehensive primary care, one of the key messages is the need for funding capacity to recruit and retain staff. Before the end of March you will receive materials to help you at your local level.

Protecting patient privacy while enabling data sharing and quality improvement has emerged as a critical issue for all FHTs, regardless of whether or not they’re involved in the Quality Improvement Decision Support Initiative.  These issues apply to data sharing between a FHT and its physician groups or with any other partner organization. Webinar Open to All Members: Registration is now open for the webinar: “Overcoming privacy issues in partnership agreements” on March 21, 2014 at 9 am to 10 am EST. Memorandum of Understanding for Collaboration and Data-Sharing: A template Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialist Collaboration and Data-Sharing Agreement is now available for all members’ use. This template was prepared by Dykeman Dewhirst O’Brien LLP (DDO Health Law) based on advice from a working group of AFHTO members.  It can be adapted to meet the needs of individual partnerships. Members are encouraged to share their improvements to this template or other model agreements with us to support system wide collaboration and learning. Privacy Toolkit to be launched March 14, 2014 The Privacy Toolkit will provide information about how to best navigate QIDS related privacy such as:

• Obligations of FHTs and their affiliated physicians to protect patient privacy when engaged in quality improvement and data analysis
• Steps that should be taken where QIDS Specialists are shared among multiple FHTs
• Decision making on data access
• What happens if there is a privacy breach related to QIDS work

Help us to meet your needs! Please review these materials and send your questions or suggestions  to Denise Pinto (improve@afhto.ca) by March 19, 2014 at 12.00 pm and we will try our best to address them in the webinar. And special thanks to the working group: This work owes a great deal to the efforts of a reference group that shared its time, knowledge and expertise: Randy Belair, Sunset Country FHT; Stephanie Dudgeon, Brockton and Area FHT; Dr. Michelle Griever, North York FHT; Sherry Lynn Harrington, Primary Health Care Services of Peterborough; Monique Hancock, STAR FHT; Jill Murphy, Thames Valley FHT; Melonie Young, Sunset Country FHT and Kavita Mehta, South East Toronto FHT.