Montreal command centre moves into larger space

MONTREAL – C4 (the Command Centre), where real-time data about care throughout CIUSSS West-Central Montreal is displayed on-screen and analyzed by staff, has moved to bigger and better equipped premises at the Jewish General Hospital. No longer tucked away in modest quarters on the second floor of Pavilion B, the award-winning Centre is now spread over a pair of spacious, connected rooms in a central location on the main floor.

This relocation has made C4 more quickly and easily accessible when senior CIUSSS leaders and members of staff need to review data on numerous large screens in order to address a crisis or discuss matters of concern.

The Command Centre is known as C4, because its activities enable the hospital and the CIUSSS to be better able to Care, Communicate, Collaborate and Create.

“Months of preparation went into designing this room as an effective and comfortable workplace environment, conducive to making decisions that improve the quality of care,” says Erin Cook (pictured), director of Quality, Transformation, Evaluation, Value, Clinical and Organizational Ethics, and Virtual Care.

“The biggest advantage is the synergy of the team,” Ms. Cook explains. “Not only will team members be able to confer and work closely together, but they’ll be also able to visualize more clearly and more broadly what is happening across our organization.”

Among the Centre’s highlights:

• A total of 32 all-new screens (including monitors) in both rooms, compared to 11 in the old premises, plus a dedicated, large main space and an adjoining conference room
• The use of predictive analytics to help anticipate potential difficulties and enable staff to be more pro-active in decision-making
• An enclosed privacy booth for confidential conversations in person, on the phone or on-screen
• All the hardware and connections necessary for multi-media presentations
• Upgraded Wi-Fi

Dr. Shannon Fraser, medical director of C4, says the additional screens will make it possible to display a wider range of information about the CIUSSS’s activities and users. This data will originate from more sites and departments across the network and from external partners.

Eventually, Dr. Fraser says, the additional screens will display information from the CIUSSS’s satellite centres, from dashboards related to individual hospital wards, and from under-represented departments that are essential to patient flow (e.g., Housekeeping and Transport).

As well, province-wide data from the Ministry of Health and Social Services can now be displayed, enabling the CIUSSS to gauge various aspects of its own performance against those of Quebec’s other healthcare networks.

C4 has been instrumental in improving the flow of in patients through the hospital, so that beds are available for new arrivals. It has also been playing a key role in preventing unnecessary delays in discharging patients from the hospital, thereby freeing up acute-care beds for those with immediate medical needs.

As well, it is streamlining access to mental healthcare, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it helped make vaccination a largely hassle-free procedure.

Joanne Côté, former director of Quality, Transformation, Evaluation, Value, Ethics and Virtual Care, notes that the vacated space was never meant to be the C4’s permanent home. Rather, the old room allowed the C4 to get on its feet while the current premises were being prepared.

“It turned out very much to our advantage,” says Ms. Côté, who retired earlier this year. “In the very beginning, we didn’t have a clear understanding of how we were going to use the space or what our technical requirements would be. “But over the past two to three years, we’ve gained a great deal of practical experience that helped us determine how C4 should be arranged and equipped in its new location.”