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Visit Health System News for up-to-date information affecting Ontario’s hospitals and the broader health care system. Get the latest best practices, success stories, resources and more, all in one place.
Focus on Fall Preparedness
In anticipation of the fall respiratory disease season, this issue highlights content showcasing hospital efforts to address the surge in demand for care including innovative solutions to alternate level of care challenges.
Enhancing Quality of Life and System Capacity for a Growing Population
Anticipated demographic changes will test health systems like never before. Optimizing rehabilitation and complex continuing care (rehab-CCC) services is an important part of the solution. Rehab-CCC services offer highly specialized care to people of all ages who need support for illness, injury, disability, or aging. This issue highlights some successful initiatives that leverage these vital rehab-CCC services to improve patients' quality of life and build system capacity to meet Ontarians' growing health care needs, which are becoming increasingly complex.
Virtual Rehabilitation Program for Seniors with Frailty Shows Promise
Virtually-delivered rehabilitation for seniors living with frailty is a feasible way of delivering care, shows a study led by researchers from the Geras Centre for Aging Research, a research centre of Hamilton Health Sciences, affiliated with McMaster University. Geras' goal is to improve the lives of older adults by bringing the most up-to-date research into frontline care.
Helping Residents Recover at Home: ALC Rates Reduced by 75 Per Cent
The pandemic's impact on wait lists and growing emergency department visits reinforced Joseph Brant Hospital's (JBH) need to find new ways of managing occupancy and length of stay. Over the past three years, JBH has reduced its alternate level of care (ALC) rate by almost 75 per cent by enhancing collaboration with community partners and standardizing processes to streamline discharge planning.
Bridging The Gap in Care from Hospital to Home with the Transition Home Program
When 72-year-old Mary Gariffe left Providence Care's Providence Transitional Care Centre and returned home, it came with equal parts excitement and worry. Once home, Mary's programming, care and services didn't stop. As a patient of Providence Care's Transitions Home program, Mary has allied health therapists from the hospital who care for her in her own home.
Virtual Behavioural Medicine Program Provides Specialized Dementia Care at Home
In early 2020, Baycrest's Virtual Behavioural Medicine program was created to help individuals living with dementia promptly access highly specialized care while remaining in their homes. The program has been proven to reduce pressure on acute care hospital beds and has also avoided unnecessary and upsetting changes in patients' physical environments.
Focus on Improving Quality of Life Addresses System Pressures
Bruyère is Eastern Ontario's leading health care organization, specializing in aging, rehabilitation, and complex care. Through specialized programs that support aging in place including outpatient rehabilitation and facilitating faster transitions, Bruyère enhances quality of life and alleviates health care system pressures, especially during peak times like the fall respiratory season.
New Centre for Patients Awaiting Community Care Underway
St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton has started work on a new centre that will provide much-needed support to alternate level of care (ALC) patients who are waiting for community-based care, a move that will free up more acute care beds in the hospital. The new Reactivation Care Centre, expected to open in spring 2026, will provide 57 beds for these patients to receive care in a more appropriate setting.
Dr. César Marquez-Chin Turns Star Wars Technology into Real-World Rehab
Dr. Cesar Marquez-Chin has been preparing for the future ever since he watched Star Wars for the first time. Today, he's part of the Neural Engineering and Therapeutics (NET) Team at the KITE Research Institute, where he's developing the kind of futuristic technology he might have seen at the movies back in Mexico. Even better, his work combines his love of sci-fi with his interest in rehab.
Transforming Lives and Advancing Health Equity through Tailored, Integrated Care
Health System News recently spoke with LOFT Community Services about their successful Back to Home Program and how it's benefitting individuals with unique health care needs. By providing tailored supports within the community, such as affordable supportive housing, LOFT's programs are helping people transition from hospital to a more appropriate setting, allowing them to thrive within the community.
Students Experiencing Increasing Levels of Psychological Distress
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health released results from the 2023 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, revealing a worrying decline in overall mental health among Ontario students. Key findings show that 38 per cent of students rate their mental health as fair or poor, while a similar number (37 per cent) reported experiencing elevated stress levels.
Uncovering Patient Care Insights with Advanced Analytics
Health System News recently spoke with the members of the Data and Analytics Team at Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare about their experience using Integrated Decision Support (IDS) since subscribing 11 months ago, and how it's benefiting their organization. IDS is Ontario's most mature and widely used collaborative solution for integrating health services utilization data across health providers.
Innovative Strategies: Preparing for a Resilient Fall Season
Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic remain top-of-mind. Humber River Health (Humber) has taken these lessons to heart, developing innovative strategies to meet potential growth in demand in the coming months. By addressing alternate level of care challenges and safeguarding the most vulnerable members of their community, Humber's approach stands as a model for resilience in health care.
Providing Relief for Families of Children with Extensive Health and Social Needs
The Extensive Needs Service (ENS) program connects children with urgent and complex needs with individualized care and support, closer to home. Respite care services are considered a crucial component of the program. To deliver in-home relief services for the children and families enrolled in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital's ENS program, the hospital partnered with VHA Home HealthCare.
Hospital Leads in Clinical Outcomes for the Sickest and Smallest Babies
The Canadian Neonatal Network recently reported that Sunnybrook's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) has the best clinical outcomes in the country, with the lowest rates of death or incidence of morbidities combined in babies born under 33 weeks of gestation. Amit and Natasha Arora recall their fear during their son's 135-day stay in Sunnybrook's NICU. Today, Aaron is a healthy and active toddler.
New “Prehabilitation” Study Could Lead to Better Surgery Recovery
Older patients having hip and knee replacements at Hamilton Health Sciences are being recruited for a national study to help determine if regular exercise, improved nutrition and better medication management in the weeks and months leading up to their surgery will help them recover faster, and get back sooner to the activities they love.
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