Clinical Services Plan – a LHIN initiative

To help guide and shape our healthcare system, the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network (HNHB LHIN) has developed a Clinical Services Plan (CSP).

The CSP, approved by the board in November 2009, is an action call for a healthier population, improved ways of working together for better health outcomes, and best practice organization and distribution of clinical programs.

This plan is a roadmap for health improvement and will guide the planning, integration and funding priorities in our LHIN over the next three years and beyond. The CSP is also an important piece of the LHIN’s Integrated Health Service Plan, approved in December 2009.

“The Clinical Services Plan is a roadmap for change and a call for action – it signals that change is coming and that tough decisions will be made,” says CSP Steering Committee Chair Rick Woodcock. “It outlines what needs to be different in three key theme areas – interprofessional care, clinical program integration, community-based health service capacity – and highlights the importance of e-health as a common enabler.”

Interprofessional care is a team-based approach to care throughout the LHIN where different healthcare providers – nurses, social workers, family doctors, pharmacists and dietitians – provide care together as a virtual team, connected electronically but in different locations.

Clinical program integration involves linking services currently provided in different organizations on a program basis, such as cardiac care, maternity and rehabilitation. This will mean that all aspects of care delivery are connected and co-ordinated following common standards and practices. All residents in the HNHB LHIN, regardless of where they live, will have equal access to services organized and working together as a system.

Community-based health service capacity involves a number of key initiatives:

• Better co-ordination of community-based services
• Better matching of services to clients’ needs
• More focus on health promotion and disease prevention
• Improved access to transportation services
• Expanded diabetes education centres and foot care services
• Focus on falls prevention

Key to each of these themes is e-health, and goals around this are as follows:

• All hospitals in the LHIN have access to a central electronic database that houses diagnostic images
• Two electronic portals – one to link healthcare providers and another for patients to access personal health information
• Electronic tool for Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) to connect clients to services

The benefits for residents are multi-fold, in that patients will only have to tell their health history once, there will be access to primary care when it’s needed, patients will undergo a test only once because all providers will have access to the results, and there will be local access to disease prevention and wellness services.   «