A recap of the Health Quality Ontario Transformation conference

The next frontier for a sustainable health system is home and community care, according to Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins. At the recent Health Quality Ontario Transformation conference, Minister Hoskins talked about the need for a patient- and family-centred health system.

At OTN, we’re supporting that vision in many ways. For example, providers using OTN saved patients an estimated 238 million kilometers worth of travel last year alone, by using telemedicine to provide care to patients in their home and in their community. This saved the system $60 million in Northern Health Travel Grant costs last year.

Another key theme at the conference was the need for increased access to information:  outcomes data for system planners, practice-specific data for providers, and personal data for patients. Improving care, and catching errors, relies on being able to analyze the current situation and measure the impact of change initiatives and new models of care.

A neat example of health care improvement data becoming available is Health Quality Ontario’s Primary Care Practice Report. If you’re a primary care physician, you can learn more about how your practice compares to that of your peers by signing up for regular customized reports.

Other themes that emerged at the conference included: the value in learning how to embrace and learn from failure; the importance of policy and infrastructure changes to enable system improvements; and the need for work on patient safety and quality to continue.

Health Quality Ontario will soon be posting videos of the sessions that day. There were many interesting speakers on various panels, and I wished that I could have attended all the concurrent sessions. Keep an eye on the Health Quality Ontario website for updates.

In the meantime, you’ll want to check out Dr. Mike Evans’ new whiteboard on quality improvement, which premiered at the conference. Created in partnership with Health Quality Ontario and St. Michael’s Hospital, the 10-minute video frames key concepts and asks important questions, such as “How can I make it easier to do the right thing?”