OTTAWA – In late spring, the Canadian College of Health Leaders announced 27 winners of the 2017 National Awards Program. They are healthcare leaders and innovative healthcare organizations from across Canada.

“The individuals and organizations being recognized exemplify leadership at its finest. Our award recipients demonstrate the impact that one person, or one team, can have within their organization and beyond. These recipients are indeed the pride of our profession,” said Ray Racette (pictured), CHE, president and CEO of the Canadian College of Health Leaders.

The awards included three categories or winners where technology plays a major role:

• Quality Improvement Initiatives Across a Health System

Award Recipient: Connecting Care to Home (CC2H)

London Health Sciences Centre

Connecting Care to Home (CC2H) is an integrated, multi-disciplinary team approach across care settings (hospital, community and primary care), developed to support patients with chronic diseases. It was selected by MOH-LTC to better integrate care for specific cohorts that experience higher rates of ED/readmission following a hospital stay.

CC2H focuses on patients admitted to hospital where the patient experience could be improved, the disease trajectory could be positively affected and care returned to the lowest cost setting: patient self-management. Literature shows that integrated multi-disciplinary team-based care improves patient experience, clinical outcomes, and lowers overall healthcare costs.

CC2H has delivered all these outcomes by successfully integrating key success factors, including patient involvement and education, leading practice care pathways, physician leadership and participation, integrated care teams across care settings, clinical patient data, executive leadership, a 24/7 live support line, and supported self-care initiatives.

The project receives strong executive leadership from LHSC and South West CCAC, where CEOs/VPs are active participants. Strategic objectives are well articulated and owned by all team members, as is a broad understanding of leading quality improvement methodology. The result is a highly integrated cross-organizational team empowered to develop, test, and refine effective, sustainable patient solutions. The program is in the third iteration with key results as follows: Hospital length of stay has declined by 59.3%, 30 day readmission has declined by 41.7%, and the total cost per patient to the healthcare system has declined by 47.9%.

• Quality Improvement Initiatives Within an Organization

Award Recipient: UHN Quality Improvement Plan Discharge Summary Program

University Health Network University

Representing a collective community of 30,000, including providers, researchers, employees, volunteers, and learners of all types, University Health Network, in Toronto, is driven by a singular purpose: transforming lives and communities through excellence in care, discovery, and learning.

Knowing that the Discharge Summary (DS) is a critical step in a patient’s journey, UHN launched its Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) DS Program to improve timeliness of completion and delivery, and quality of documentation. This has ensured fostering a tight-knit circle of care in the community we serve, communicating a summary of our patient’s hospital stay to community care providers, ensuring timely follow-ups, and preventing adverse events and readmissions for our patients that depend on us for safe and quality care.

Actively engaging patients and primary care has enabled UHN to deliver on its Primary Value – the needs of patients come first – and drive sustainable quality improvement for 4,700 clinicians across 51 Inpatient Units, resulting in a 70% increase in timely completion, 120% increase in timely DS delivery, and 64% of service visits experiencing fewer readmissions.

All this is an example of successful quality improvement with far-reaching impacts on strengthening collaboration with primary care, improving care transitions, and ensuring the needs of patients come first.

• Award of Excellence in Mental Health and Quality Improvement

This award honours a hospital, health authority, community based mental health and addictions program/service, or a leader in the field that demonstrates evidence-informed and sustained quality improvements (QI) in the area of mental health and addictions.

Award Recipient: Scarborough and Rouge Hospital

Individuals in need of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) typically face challenges like long wait lists, a shortage of therapists, and lack of access to a therapist outside of regular business hours. Now, adult outpatient clients of Scarborough and Rouge Hospital’s Mental Health department can access treatment for anxiety and depression any time and place that is most convenient for them.

Internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (iCBT), the first program of its kind in Canada, was created to increase accessibility to an evidence-based practice proven to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Currently, there are lengthy wait times across Canada to receive CBT services. Face-to-face CBT sessions are typically one hour in duration and individuals can require up to 12 sessions.

With the iCBT program, therapists require 25 minutes to respond to patients with feedback, and as a result can provide service to a greater number of individuals within a shorter timeframe.

Since the program’s implementation, Scarborough and Rouge Hospital has significantly reduced wait-times for CBT from 3 weeks for face-to-face CBT to 1 week for iCBT. In addition, iCBT has proven to be more accessible than traditional face-to-face group CBT sessions, with 30% higher completion rates.

iCBT has also been more effective than group CBT in regards to symptom reduction, as patients of iCBT on average showed greater improvements in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress when compared to patients attending the traditional group CBT sessions.

Further information about the awards is available at http://cchl-ccls.ca/company/roster/companyRosterDetails.html