Dialogue Volume 14 Issue 3 2018 | Page 20

COORDINATION CritiCall Ontario Facts & Stats Number of cases: Number of patients transferred: 42,135 Dr. Desmond Bohn 20 19,025 (2017/18) Number of patients not transferred 23,110 vice, however, the service is available to any hospital-based physician in Ontario who is caring for an urgent or emergent patient. This can include obstetricians, pediatricians and others. CritiCall Ontario provides important coordination in what can often be a chal- lenging time; a time when every second counts. In keeping with this, a Provincial Medical Director and eight Associate Medi- cal Directors are always available to support call centre case facilitation by providing assistance and direction for difficult cases where escalation may be necessary. The call centre is available 24/7/365 and staffed by CritiCall Ontario call agents who collect basic physician and patient information, including the imme- diate medical concerns, and then contact a specialist at another hospital who can pro- vide a consultation and, if necessary, accept the patient into their care. Over the last year, CritiCall Ontario facilitated more than 42,000 cases and, of those, more than half did not require the patient to be transferred to another hospi- tal. The benefit, for those not transferred, is the review of care plan and strategy, and the provision of support as needed to the referring physicians. CritiCall Ontario relies on a number of resources to make this type of case facilita- tion possible, including the willingness of specialists at Ontario hospitals to answer the call and provide essential consultations to their colleagues at smaller sites. CritiCall Ontario also hosts the Provincial Hospital Resource System (PHRS) which is available DIALOGUE ISSUE 3, 2018 Median number of calls made per case: 7 Median time to patient acceptance: 28 minutes to all acute care hospitals in Ontario and provides an inventory of bed and resource availability by hospital. This information is used by CritiCall Ontario’s call centre to assist with day-to-day case facilitation and during times of local, regional or provincial crisis when coordinated patient decanting may be required. Hospitals are responsible for meeting CritiCall Ontario requirements included in their hospital service accountability agree- ments. These agreements require hospitals to: 1.  Use CritiCall Ontario for all neurosurgery/ spine and out of country cases 2.  Be responsive to requests for consultation from CritiCall Ontario 3.  Update the Critical Care Information Sys- tem (CCIS) immediately for each admis- sion and discharge to a critical care bed and comply with the CCIS Data Collection Policy 4.  Update the PHRS four times per day (0800, 1200, 1600 and 2400) 5.  Partner with CritiCall Ontario and other hospitals within the LHIN and province to establish on-call coverage for critical care and related medical specialties. For more information about CritiCall Ontario visit www.criticall.org or contact a Client Relations Manager by telephone at (289) 396-7000. MD