Enhancing the Health of the Communities We Serve
St. Joe's is located in one of the most diverse and culturally rich neighbourhoods of Toronto. We are committed to ensuring equitable access to services for all of the communities that we serve. We work with our partners to create a seamless continuum of care from the time patients arrive at the hospital until they are discharged. By partnering with our communities and other health service providers we are able to improve access to services and improve health outcomes for our patients and the boarder community.
Collaborating to Provide a Heart Attack Program that Saves Lives
For patients suffering from a STEMI heart attack, timing is everything. When Toronto Emergency Medical Services (EMS) identifies that a person in our catchment area is having this type of heart attack, they by pass our Emergency Department and take them straight to St. Michael's Hospital. By going directly to St. Mike's Cath Lab, it reduces the ‘door to balloon time' and avoids irreversible damage to the patient's heart muscle. Once the STEMI blockage is cleared, the patient is brought back to St. Joe's for continued treatment close to home.
Providing the right care, at the right place, for the right amount of time is the foundation of the Toronto Heart Attack Collaborative and the reason why St. Joe's was excited to play a role in launching this life-saving partnership and collaboration.
Health Equity Plan: A Framework that our partnerships work within
Making health care accessible is key to our role as a community teaching hospital and through our Health Equity Plan, we are working to break down the barriers that prevent people from getting the care they need. Important to reducing health inequities is our partnerships with the Hospital Collaborative on Marginalized Populations, Health Equity Council, Healthcare Interpretation Network and the Toronto Hospitals Interpretation Services (THIS). Community engagement activities such as the creation of our Population Panels are also key, in order to get valuable feedback from patients and community partners that will help us provide appropriate, high quality services that are responsive to the needs of the many diverse community members we serve.
Primary care is one service area we've identified as a challenge for our community to access. Our strategic plan has addressed this issue and we have developed corporate objectives that will see us strengthen relationships and enhance recruitment and collaboration with primary care physicians. Our Family Medicine Centre, Urban Family Health Team and After Hours Clinic, are services available to our community that provide primary care and all of which operate to increase access to improve the health of our communities.
Through these services St. Joe's is able to treat patients who are recent immigrants to Canada, those suffering with chronic mental illness, individuals with substance use disorders, elderly persons including frail housebound seniors, women who are victims of violence, and low income single-parent families. All of these groups experience significant barriers to receiving care within the healthcare system. Through these services, patients can also be connected to other medical specialists, community resources and receive education on managing their health issues.
Partnering to Enhance Care Across the Toronto Central LHIN
The Toronto Central LHIN encourages its hospitals to seek out opportunities to work together to improve our local healthcare systems by providing accessible, appropriate, coordinated, effective and efficient services. Last year, St. Joe's partnered with Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (Toronto Rehab) to transfer our Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit to the TRI Hillcrest site. This partnership, one of the first voluntary integration initiatives in the LHIN was designed to improve access to services in the LHIN. By transferring our inpatient rehabilitation services, we ensured that our patients would continue to receive the appropriate level of care in a setting best equipped to meet their needs. Building on the strengths of both organizations, we have helped to advance health system integration with a focus on improved quality across the continuum of care.
- Matt Anderson, CEO, Toronto Central LHIN
Helping Seniors return to independent living at home
Seniors are one of the most rapidly growing populations in our catchment area – seniors account for 31% of our inpatient admissions and 19% of our Emergency Department visits this year. Finding ways to enhance the way we care for seniors and build on partnerships that supports their safe recovery at home is a priority.
St. Joe's was the first hospital in the Toronto Central LHIN to launch the Home at Last Program, an initiative supported by the Ministry of Health's Aging at Home Strategy. The program helps seniors who are well enough to be discharged from our hospital, but may not have the necessary support from family members or other caregivers to make a smooth transition back to the basic functions of everyday living.
Home at Last pairs these seniors with a Personal Support Worker who helps them on their discharge day with important activities such as picking up equipment, medication and food. Sometimes all patients need is that little extra help getting home from the hospital. This partnership with the Community Care Access Centre and Community Service Agency helped give seniors their independence back.
Waiting at Home
Like most hospitals in the province, we continue to care for a growing number of Alternate Level of Care patients. These are inpatients who have finished their treatment and are waiting for placement in a more appropriate care setting in the community. Partnering with the Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre, we launched a pilot program that allowed patients in need of a long-term care facility, to wait at home with the assistance of a personal support worker, nurse, occupational therapists and a physiotherapists, for a period of 60 days. St. Joe's finished the Waiting at Home pilot with the most number of patients placed out of every acute care hospital in the Toronto Central LHIN.
- Carol Millar, Director, Hospital Transitions and Relationships
Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre