What’s the news from Powell River?
Today, we answer a question about the Home Health Redesign (HHR) initiative and the rollout of care management In Powell River — with the help of our Coastal colleagues, of course.
Read on for more and add your voice to the conversation, too. We also welcome your questions, comments and suggestions.
Today’s answered question
Q. How has the change to care management gone at Powell River?
A. The Home Health Redesign (HHR) initiative, launched in April 2012, has helped Home Health teams work in partnership with family physicians to better meet the needs of an aging population, supporting clients with their decision to stay at home as long as it’s safe to do so. In time, our clients’ access to services, ability to self-manage their health and quality of life will all improve.
As Powell River is part of VCH-Coastal —not VCH-Vancouver — we consulted with Margaret Antolovich, Powell River’s manager of public health and prevention services, as well as project manager Paddy Assenheimer. Their redesign was unique as they adopted a care management model that included extended hours for home health services, team huddles, new and revised roles, a most responsible clinician for each care management client, and maximized use of ambulatory care. It was a big change, one that required extra staffing support in the spring of 2014 to address the new workflow and staff concerns. Today, staff are in their new roles and Powell River is essentially operating like any other community home health unit in VCH.
Home Health Redesign across VCH has a similar goal but how we achieve that goal may look different in every community based on the community’s makeup, staff input, family doctor input, etc. For example, here in Vancouver we are not planning on adopting the care management model in the same way Powel River did; however, we remain confident that the use of GP care conferencing and telephonic care management by our teams will improve the quality of care for our clients. We’re expecting our initial outcome data in April and will continue to monitor progress across VCH.
What’s on your mind?
If you have a question, comment or suggestion, we encourage you to email us what’s on your mind at onevancouver@vch.ca.