On Friday, March 9, 1:30 pm ET, join Health Quality Ontario CEO Dr. Joshua Tepper, and VP of Evidence Development and Standards Dr. Irfan Dhalla, for a tweet chat to discuss the opioid crisis and pain management.
A growing body of evidence from Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom is providing compelling evidence of improved quality outcomes as a result of using health information technologies (HIT), and Health Quality Ontario has identified HIT as an enabler of quality care.
Evidence from these jurisdictions has shown that electronic medical records and other forms of HIT can improve patient safety, improve patient outcomes and make providers more effective and efficient, as well as aid faster adoption of evidence to practice. These technologies can also facilitate quality care by providing better data on which to base clinical, policy and funding decisions.
The Safe Patients/Safe Staff program at Sinai Health System provides resources to help staff safely and effectively care for patients who are at risk of aggressive or dangerous behaviour.
At Grand River Hospital Corporation, teams are available to respond to codes for potential workplace violent incidents. In the event of a code called for aggressive behaviour/physical danger, an immediate and mandatory debrief is held to ensure the emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing of all staff and patients.
The North Bay Regional Health Centre and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health are among nine hospitals in Ontario implementing the Safewards program, an evidence-based series of interventions that promote patient and employee safety by reducing conflict and containment.
Simply measuring quality doesn’t make health care better. But transforming that data into opportunities for improvement can have a very real impact on patients and their health and safety.
This is demonstrated in the recent Quality Surgery: Improving Surgical Care in Ontario report released by Health Quality Ontario.
“The only constant is change”, a quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, feels particularly true in healthcare.
Healthcare systems around the world seem to be in an almost constant state of change.