D1 - Redesigning an existing but underutilized and untapped HHR to expand the inter-disciplinary primary care team

1. Expanding access to team-based care

  • Date: 2024-10-25
  • Concurrent Session: Concurrent Session D
  • Time: 8:45- 9:30 am
  • Room:
  • Style: Presentation (information provided to audience, with opportunity for audience to ask question)
  • Focus: Balance between both (e.g. Presentation of a best-practice guideline that combines research evidence, policy issues and practical steps for implementation)
  • Target Audience: Clinical providers, Representatives of stakeholder/partner organizations
     

Learning Objectives:

Participants will learn: 

  • Integrating paramedicine services into interprofessional primary care services at the Carefirst FHT
  • Supporting providers (both paramedicine and Family Health Teams) in working to their optimal scope of practice and meeting patient’s needs in the right place at the right time  
  • Activating a home based model of care delivery in partnership that also identifies unmet patients needs and forms appropriate connections / referrals to other health and social services in the community  
  • Enabling urgent care to be met and emergency department visits avoided  
  • Identifying a connection for unattached patients in the community in need of comprehensive / team based primary care
  • Leveraging existing digital tools

Summary/Abstract:
The Ontario healthcare system is under strain and in need of novel solutions to avoid threats to service delivery.[1] Overcrowding of emergency departments, difficulty accessing primary care, long wait times, and under-served populations are examples of this strain. One of the greatest opportunities to relieve this pressure is through better utilization of existing HHR and innovative models of care/partnership.    Paramedicine represents an existing, very large, underutilized and untapped HHR. The objectives of our partnership project it to activate trained IMPACC* paramedics to respond to a Carefirst FHT’s patient change in condition, and whose healthcare providers can benefit from leveraging a timely and mobile resource as part of their care pathways. Members of the interprofessional primary care team can request paramedics via Ocean eReferral to provide timely services (e.g., assessments, point of care diagnostics, interventions) in the community. This could include monitoring, follow-up assessments and diagnostics, as well as attending to exacerbations and acute changes in patient condition. The visit can be coordinated with the primary care provider in virtual attendance or a follow up note/discussion after.     The IMPACC paramedics responding to 911 calls may also activate the Carefirst FHT to attach a patient they treat in the community who is in need of ongoing primary care.     *Trained and equipped group of paramedics to better service lower acuity events, and support interprofessional teams  
 

Presenter:

  • Victoria Rossander    Program Manager    Community Paramedicine, Paramedic Services Branch, Community and Health Services       
  • Yousif Saad    Superintendent of System Integration