Congratulations to the Couchiching Family Health Team for being named a 2016 LEADing Practice Initiative. The FHT is being recognized for exemplary use of digital tools to strengthen clinical practice and provider experience. Couchiching FHT’s project integrated a tablet-based system into their EMR to screen patients at risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This also allowed patients to edit demographic information stored in their patient chart in the EMR in real time, without any increase in staff time or resources. Presented at the AFHTO 2015 Conference, benefits of the system included approximately 40% (or 3000) of the total patient population completing smoking screening in a little over 4 months compared to the previous, paper-based COPD screening process in which only 200 patients were screened at baseline. There was also a 33% increase in referral to the smoking cessation program. Couchiching is now expanding the tablet program to further identify and support individuals with other chronic diseases e.g. diabetes, and using such screenings for depression. The LEADing Practice Initiative, a partnership between Canada Health Infoway and Accreditation Canada is part of a larger Clinician Education Campaign, identifying LEADing practices across Canada that demonstrate the clinical benefits of digital health. Their award will be presented at the 2016 Peer Leader Symposium: Building Peer Leader Bridges to Advance Clinical Practice event to be held on March 3-4, 2016 at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre in Toronto. Relevant Links:
- "Couchiching Family Health Team recognized with national honour", The Orillia Packet & Times, Feb. 23, 2016
- CASE STUDY: How Ocean Transformed the Couchiching Family Health Team’s COPD Program
- LEADing Practice Awards
- Leveraging convergence of healthcare delivery, business dynamics and technology advancements to advance collection and utilization of meaningful COPD patient data- Couchiching FHT’s 2015 conference presentation (members only link)
- Handout – from Couchiching FHT’s 2015 conference presentation