ON Chiropractic
strategies with other local health integration networks to improve patient care
and access to high quality health services
and to enhance continuity of health care
across local health systems and across the
province.
LHINs have been successful in
meeting these objectives to varying degrees
across the province. But what has emerged
is evidence of a concerted effort to put
patient care and service at the centre of
Ontario’s new health care system. By the
time the LHINs were operational in the
late 2000s, the government was preparing
to make that focus on patient-centred
care even more explicit. This theme was
extended when the Ontario Legislature
passed the Excellent Care for All Act (ECFA)
in 2010.
I
n an interview about ECFA the
following year, Minster of Health
and Long-term Care Deb Matthews
referred to it is as “the most important
piece of legislation since the introduction
of universal health care in Canada.”
Minister Matthews then articulated that
the goals of ECFA included breaking down
old “silos” in order to focus on the quality
of the care that patients receive in Ontario.
How does ECFA promise to
improve patient care and quality? The
act begins by mandating that “quality
committees” be established at every health
care organization in the province. These
committees were then tasked with three
core responsibilities:
1
Monitor organizational quality:
Quality committees are responsible for
monitoring specific quality issues and
the general quality of service being
delivered within their organization.
One way this is done is through
community engagement. In fact, each
health care organization is required
by ECFA to conduct surveys of both
patients and employees each fiscal
year in order to determine the level of
satisfaction with the quality of service
being delivered by the organization.
Those organizations are also required
to establish a patient relations process
through which patients can provide
their feedback.
plans include performance
improvement targets. And, in an
effort to ensure the effectiveness of
these plans, they specifically tie the
compensation of the organization’s
executive leadership to the extent
to which the targets have been met.
The plans are also submitted to the
Ontario Health Quality Council
and, frequently, to their local LHIN
which incorporates these quality
improvement targets into funding
agreements.
2
Recommend quality improvement
initiatives:
When quality issues are identified,
it falls to quality committees
to study those issues and make
recommendations to the organization
“
I
t was when the ground work of these
two pieces of legislation was in place
that the government articulated its
full vision for health care in the province.
The values at the heart of
this evolution are not new to
chiropractic. Chiropractors have
had an 'obsessive' focus on patients
since the profession began over
100 years ago."
that would improve quality in those
areas.
3
Oversee quality improvement plans:
On an annual basis, quality
committees are charged with
preparing and implementing quality
improvement plans. The committees
are required to factor into these plans
the results of their satisfaction surveys
and data from the patient relations
process, among other considerations.
These annual quality improvement
“Ontario’s Action Plan for Health Care”
identified the most significant challenges
facing the system in Ontario as budget and
demographics. Today, 42 cents of every
dollar that is spent at Queen’s Park is spent
on health care, and in the year the action
plan was announced, the province faced a
multibillion dollar budget deficit. To make
matters more complicated, the Ontario
population is both aging and living longer.
If left unchanged, Ontario health care costs
could increase by as much as 50% by the
year 2030.
www.chiropractic.on.ca
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