Championing Integrated Health Care

Our Goal: Create strong and lasting partnerships that advance health system integration.

• Strategic Alliance Between the OHA and OACCAC: In April 2010, the OHA announced its alliance with the OACCAC which builds on their existing relationship, and a shared commitment to acting on the basis of evidence. The strategic alliance is initiative-driven, with a focus on improved patient and client outcomes and experiences. The alliance helped produce the policy paper, “Bending the Health Care Cost Curve: Advice for the Government of Ontario.”
• Physician Engagement Strategy: A new physician engagement strategy was created to strengthen the relationship with physician leadership and foster inter-professional collaboration. Elements of the strategy include the creation of a Physician Provincial Leadership Council, tools and resources to support hospitals on physician issues, OHA involvement in a variety of OHA/MOHLTC/Ontario Medical Association (OMA) tri-partite committees, and reviewing OHA involvement on physician-related committees.
  • Physician Provincial Leadership Council: Comprised of 12-15 Physician Leaders (i.e., Chiefs of Staff and VPs of Medical Affairs) and CEOs, and will provide strategic advice to the OHA on various physician-related matters impacting hospital-based practice in Ontario.
• Maximizing the Impact of Rehabilitation (Rehab) and Complex Continuing Care (CCC) on Reducing Emergency Room (ER) and Alternate Level of Care (ALC) Lengths of Stay: On June 18, 2010, an Invitational Roundtable Discussion was hosted by the MOHLTC, in partnership with the OHA and LHINs to better link discussions about CCC and rehab to current issues and solutions being explored to address ALC and ER pressures.
• Addressing ER Wait Times for People with Mental Health and Addictions: The OHA began collaborating with the CMHA, OFCMHAP and the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario to discuss ways to reduce ER wait times for people with mental health and addiction needs.
• Partnership with OSOS: The OHA partnered with Open Source Order Sets (OSOS), a web-enabled collaborative network, as part of its efforts to support quality and patient safety in all areas of hospital care. The network also integrates medical knowledge into the ordering process to improve workflow, resource utilization and standardization of best practices across health systems.
• Partnership with PharmaTrust^TM: The OHA partnered with PharmaTrust^TM to enhance patient access to prescribed medications and to make Ontario’s prescription dispensing more efficient. The organizations collaborated on the installation of telepharmacy prescription-dispensing kiosks in hospitals across the province, that offer live video pharmacist counseling and quick, safe 24/7 access to prescription and over-the-counter medications, dispensed under the complete control of a pharmacist.
• Partnership with COACH: In 2010, HealthAchieve partnered with COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association, to present "eHealthAchieve", a new and enhanced eHealth track that combines the scale of HealthAchieve, with the thoughtful, industry-leading eHealth discourse provided by COACH and its traditional Fall Forums.
• Partnership with HIMSS Analytics: The OHA continues to partner with HIMSS Analytics, a wholly-owned, not-for-profit subsidiary of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) that supports improved decision-making for health care organizations. The partnership enhances benefits for Ontario hospitals through the development of Ontario’s first database of hospital health information technologies, applications and benchmarking indicators.
• Health Care Expo: HealthAchieve and the MOHLTC partnered for the second year to present the “Celebrating Innovations in Health Care Expo”, to showcase successful projects from health care organizations all over the province, helping organizations share best practices.