2019-08-12 from justanoldcountrydoctor.com
Ontario has recently embarked on what has been described as the biggest transformation in health care since Medicare. Central to this transformation are the development of two new organizations.
The first is Ontario Health. Ontario Health amalgamates numerous separate agencies (all 14 LHINs, Cancer Care Ontario, eHealth, etc.) into one large corporation. The goal is clearly to reduce the duplicate back end administrative costs (separate payrolls, HR departments, workplace policy and procedures and so on) and create an integrated agency with seamless and consistent policies. As someone who was a fierce critic of the previous LHINs, I can’t help but be pleased at this move. (It was also recommendation 3 I made to then Premier Kathleen Wynne on how to fix health care).
The second move is to create Ontario Health Teams (OHTs). In broad terms the goal of the OHTs is to ensure that doctors, hospitals, home and community providers work together as one co-ordinated team to help patients. The OHTs stated goal is to integrate care around the patient.
The concept of OHTs is certainly a good one. There is plenty of evidence that suggests integrated care is good for patients. Jenny Grant (from McKinsey and Company) wrote about the benefits of integrated care (particularly for patients with chronic disease)...
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