Are you interested in promoting and improving the safety and quality of Alberta’s healthcare system? Do you want to see changes in this area? If so, the Health Quality Council of Alberta is looking for volunteers to join its Patient/Family Advisory Panel. Click here for more information.
Imagine if doctors were paid for quality of care rather than given a fee for service. How would this change the care provided to patients? What effect would this have on patient experience and patient satisfaction? What impact would this type of physician compensation have on the healthcare system in terms of resources used, expenses and overall costs? Alberta is about to find out.
Alberta doctors voted 74 per cent in favour of a set of amendments to the existing 2011-18 master agreement that will change elements of patient care and how doctors are paid.
The new deal will introduce a compensation model for some primary-care doctors aimed at rewarding time and quality of care given to patients rather than just the number of services provided, the province says.
Click here to read the full article.
Are you interested in patient/provider partnerships (e.g., What they are? How they can be created? What barriers exist that impede their development?) If so, you may wish to join the Patent 4 Change Fishbowl session, which is being offered as part of Alberta Health Services’ Patient & Family Centred Care Week. The session will be held via phone and Internet and is open to all. Click here to read more about the Fishbowl session. Don’t miss out on what promises to be a very engaging experience. Register here.
Are you a parent or caregiver of a child who has experienced an inner ear infection or other related ear problem? Would you like to help develop educational resources for parents and caregivers concerning this topic? If so, a research team at the University of Alberta are looking for you. Click on the image below for more information.
What are you doing on Oct-24-25? Why not attend the 2nd annual Quality SUMMIT-INSPIRE ACTION TOGETHER.
Date: October 24-25th
Time: Oct 24- 7:30 a.m. (registration) – 4:00 p.m.
Oct 25- 7:00 a.m. (registration) – 4:30 p.m.
Place: MacEwan Conference and Event Centre; University of Calgary; Calgary, Alberta
This event will see patients and healthcare providers coming together to:
* Inspire each other to change and improve our healthcare system
* Create a connection point for us to take action on our good ideas
* Together solve the problems and plan for the future
This conference is open to AHS and non-AHS staff, nurses, clinicians, allied health staff, patient and family advisors, administrators, quality and other health care providers. Registration begins today and space is limited.
Click on the following link and you will be taken to the registration page.
http://www.cvent.com/events/quality-summit-2016/event-summary-bc9d45c1dffb4462b38697e7102b9b35.aspx
“AHS [Alberta Health Services] put out a nice video with a succinct description of how patients and families are at centre of their work. I quite liked it.. Have a look if you are interested.” – Troy, a member of the Pts4Chg community.
Have you ever felt overburdened by the amount of paperwork, phone calls, e-mails, appointments, etc., associated with navigating the health care system? If so, you are not alone.
In the article, “Unpaid, stressed, and confused: patients are the health care system’s free labor,” Sarah Kliff describes how the health care system can place considerable burden on the patient him/herself. This realization came about from her own experience managing a chronic foot injury. As Kliff explains:
What I didn’t understand was the burden patients face in managing the health care system: a massive web of doctors, insurers, pharmacies, and other siloed actors that seem intent on not talking with one another. That unenviable task gets left to the patient, the secret glue that holds the system together.
For me, this feels like a part-time job where the pay is lousy, the hours inconvenient, and the stakes incredibly high. It’s up to me to ferry medical records between different providers, to track down a pharmacy that can fill my prescription, and to talk to my insurance when a treatment gets denied to find out why.
Click here to read the full article.
The following was written and submitted by the Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics (AUA) project team.
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Long-term care (LTC) sites often wait months for expert consultation on very challenging responsive behaviours (or send the person to hospital). Last November we experimented by throwing out an open invitation to our LTC contacts to help out with a case study from North zone. There were many insightful suggestions from more than 30 callers (and no one said, “Have you thought of adding more drugs?”) We wrote the case study and ideas into a report and shared with the sites. Curbside consultations have grown in popularity with 30 – 50 callers (some representing groups of up to 10 staff members) at noon and 2 pm on the 3rd Wednesday of each month. This is helping residents and staff get more timely help, is educating and empowering staff to try new ideas, and has the potential to take some pressure off the very stretched mental health consultants.
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Click here to learn about the AUA team and their initiatives.
Over 1250 acute or chronic pain patients participated in an online survey by Pain News Network and the International Pain Foundation that focused on hospital pain care. Based on the results obtained, many pain patients felt that the treatment they received from a hospital was far less than ideal. As one pain patient stated, “It’s so bad that I will not seek treatment in an ER or hospital unless I really feel like my life is in jeopardy. They do not get it, they do not listen, and they do not care.” Another individual wrote, “I refuse to go to ER. It will end up killing me because I know how sick I am, but I would rather die than deal with ignorant, condescending doctors and nurses.” To read more about this study’s findings, click here.
Insite is the first legal supervised interjection site in North America. Located in Vancouver, Canada, people can inject drugs in a safe place that is health focused. The goal of Insite, which is operated and funded by Vancouver Coastal Health, is to “decrease the adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug use without requiring abstinence from drug use.” (http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/supervised-consumption-sites Continue reading
