The term 'family caregiving' generates over 3 million hits on Google. Family Caregiving is growing as a community, and patients are already established as a community. As we see it, the next step is to bring the two communities together.
We're looking forward to new projects in 2013. Here are just a few you should stay tuned in for:
Performance Indicators for Primary Care: We have been invited by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) to participate in the development of performance indicators that will be used to measure how well primary care is being delivered in Ontario. We had the first working session on Nov 21st with more to come.
The Patients’ Association has been an active participant in preparing for the Partners Advancing Transitions in Healthcare (PATH) project meant to improve healthcare transitions for older people. We have assembled a group of patient educators who will participate in the project teams, support the patient and family members, and assist the staff champions of person and family centred care.
In a project funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, a patient collaborative visited several health care organizations this year to conclude their efforts to gain a better understanding of how patients and those close to them could participate in the health care system. A group of nine experienced patients visited hospitals and healthcare facilities in Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto and Thunder Bay to see how patients participated. We found that there were three kinds of active patient and family participation in decision making:
The Patients’ Association has been busy representing the patient voice at events throughout Canada. To help our Members keep up, we’ve started using the Twitter hashtag #PACattends to indicate our presence at events. For those who don’t use Twitter, you can still follow us by looking to the Twitter feed on our homepage (the feed aggregates our posts avoiding the need for you to login). Under #PACattends, you will be able to read updates and commentary from the events we’ve attended. We’ve been attending some exciting events!
This year the Patients’ Association, in collaboration with the Ontario Medical Association, held the Patients’ Choice Awards ceremonies in Ottawa, Sarnia, and North Western Ontario. All award recipients were nominated by patients, and then a patient jury selected the winners.
The following general practitioners and specialists were awarded for providing exceptional patient care: Dr. Evelyn Honsl, Dr. Robin Boushey from Ottawa, Dr. Anil Duggal, Dr. Jaishree Uppal, from Sarnia and Dr. Andrew Siren, and Dr. Adam Moir from Northwestern Ontario.
Thunder Bay, ON, Wednesday December 5, 2012 – For the first time ever residents in Northwestern Ontario were given the opportunity to nominate their physician for a Patients’ Choice Award. The Patients’ Choice Award honours two physicians who have demonstrated exceptional care in the community.