*"Cure sometimes, treat often, comfort always"* - Hippocrates -
		America needs real health-care reform; Canada & US should move away from fee-for-service and start integrating care: US Gov. Howard Dean tells Foundation Symposium Fee-for-service and pay-for-performance models can drive inflationary health-care costs and do nothing to advance quality, warned US Governor Howard Dean at a symposium hosted April 26 by The Change Foundation, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The invitational event,Tools for Change: Funding Levers & Incentives for Integrating Patient Care in Ontario,engaged about 100 health-care stewards and stakeholders in tackling a central question: how do we create a system of funding and incentives that best enables providers to achieve seamless, coordinated care for patients across all settings? Watch a video podcast with the dynamic Dean and Foundation CEO Cathy Fooks. The Q & A covers the politics behind the US reforms, Dean's hopes for the future, and his country's best examples of integrated "one-stop shopping" health systems such as Kaiser Permanente, Geisinger Health Systems, and Federally-Qualified Health Centres. Dean characterized changes to US health-insurance legislation as "baby steps" that extend coverage but leave intact a deeply flawed system. The US leader praised Canada's universal single-payer system but said both countries need to improve quality and "vertical integration" by building stronger connections and accountability between primary care, acute care, specialty care and community care. READ MORE
		Patient-centred systems must improve individual/caregiver experiences across the board & encourage people to be health-care participants --not just recipients: Meeting of the Minds Forum fitting launch pad for new strategic plan that seeks to change the debate, change the practice, change the experience To create a patient-centred system and improve people's health-care experiences, we need new accountabilities, alignments, and attitudes to build a true partnership with the people who use health care to redesign services around their ongoing needs and preferences by listening and learning from their lived stories - both positive and painful. Those themes - among others - emerged during The Change Foundation's 3rd annual Meeting of the Minds: Rethinking Health Services with Patients Top of Mind, June 22 & 23. An eclectic line-up of compelling and substantive participants from across Canada , the UK and the US challenged -- and were challenged by -- a group of national and provincial health-care and association leaders, patient and caregiver advocates, community leaders, health-care practitioners, LHIN CEOs, and representatives from the education and retail sectors. As part of the program, they were asked to clarify what a patient-centred health-care system means, and to identify the first thing we need to do to improve the patient experience in Ontario. See what they came up with: Playback video from the day. READ MORE
		CAMH signed on as 2nd field partner in project probing value of social media to improve patient care. Snapshot of Web 2.0 use in health care coming this fall The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is the second Ontario health-care organization to join a pioneering inquiry into a promising frontier -- Using on-line patient dialogue to drive health-care improvement. The project is a partnership between The Change Foundation and the Health Strategy Innovation Cell, started last fall when Providence Healthcare in Toronto came on board. Both Providence and CAMH, have strong commitments to quality improvement (QI). The project aims to develop and test emerging best practice guidelines for healthcare organizations on the use of open-access social media such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs to improve patient care. It is guided by the advice of an 11-member ginger council with social media and health-care expertise. READ MORE
		Integrated Client Care Project begins redesign of wound care services based on value from the client's perspective Improvement teams with the multi-partner Integrated Client Care Project have swung into action; the project helps to further The Change Foundation's priority on improving home and community care. CHQI has taken each of four interdisciplinary teams through a three-day exercise of analyzing and redesigning their care processes with an eye to more integrated care and better outcomes for clients. Supported by a radically new funding scheme in which home and community care providers are paid for a bundle of services tailored to clients over time, Community Care Access Centres and home-care providers in Windsor, Brampton, Ottawa and Sudbury are the first out of the gate to implement this approach. Designing and testing changes to how wound care is provided for people with diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers over the next 18 months, they are paving the way to province-wide permanent change in how health care is delivered in Ontario. "This project is a perfect fit with CHQI's expertise in improvement science and change management," said Paula Blackstien-Hirsch, Executive Director of CHQI. "CHQI's role is to help the teams gain the skills and knowledge to do the challenging improvement work — to integrate fragmented services, remove redundancies, ensure best practice, and effectively engage clients and caregivers in the change process." Read more about Integrated Client Care and other initiatives in the latest issue of The Quality Pulse, CHQI's e-newsletter.