Healthcare quarterly (Toronto, Ont.)
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Resident and family councils aim to improve resident and family satisfaction, but guidelines for councils are scarce. This project developed a toolkit and tested its ability, along with networking meetings, to promote successful councils. ⋯ Participants found that the toolkit helped improve council function and, with the networking meetings, increased participation. All sites found the toolkit and networking meetings to be valuable resources and had a strong desire to have them available in the future.
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Collaborative interprofessional primary care (PC) teams are widely seen as an essential attribute of high-performing PC systems (Aggarwal and Hutchinson 2012). Effective PC teams play a key role in the mobilization of healthcare resources and navigation of the health and social care system for their patients. In Ontario, the establishment of Family Health Teams has resulted in the implementation of unique programs that deliver services to palliative and elderly patients with a focus on keeping them at home and out of hospital. Case studies cited in this article highlight two innovative programs in Family Health Teams and provide perspectives on lessons for successful implementation.
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Seniors account for a high number of emergency department (ED) visits, yet little is known about how they decide to visit the ED. This paper reports on the results of surveys completed by 264 seniors who visited the ED and their caregivers and interviews with a subset (N = 51) of survey respondents, aimed at understanding how they decide to visit the ED. Although older adults rely on others to help them decide whether to visit the ED, only a small proportion consult healthcare providers in doing so. Opportunities exist for enhancing seniors' decision-making process regarding ED visits and access to community-based healthcare to avoid ED visits.
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Alberta is undertaking a bold and somewhat risky step overhauling its health system governance to build higher performance in quality, safety and improved health outcomes for Albertans. On the heels of having re-established a single province-wide health authority (Alberta Health Services [AHS]), provincial health system decision makers have moved to establish province-wide Strategic Clinical Networks™ (SCNs). ⋯ SCNs were developed in part as a strategy for strengthening clinical engagement to achieve a broad range of healthcare delivery benefits including improvement of clinical care processes and reduced variations in practice, better access to care and improved patient outcomes across the province. Here, we examine the rationale and potential of this governance intervention, while also considering some of the fundamental questions around their potential impact and the ultimate need for multidimensional assessment.
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Improving health and health services requires both better knowledge (a key function of research) and better action to adapt and use what is already known (quality improvement). However, organizational and cultural divides between academic research institutions and health system organizations too often result in missed opportunities to integrate research and improvement. The Saskatchewan Health Quality Council's experience and relationships, from linking research, quality improvement and patient engagement in its leadership of the province's healthcare quality improvement journey, provided core support and leadership in the development of Saskatchewan's Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research SUPPORT Unit. The vision is for the SUPPORT Unit to integrate research and quality improvement into a continuous learning health system.