Innovation Award Winner – Sherbourne Health Centre, Infirmary Program The Sherbourne Health Centre, which encompasses the Sherbourne Family Health Team, was honoured for developing an innovative program to provide chemo and radiation therapies to individuals experiencing homelessness, or those with no real ‘home’. These patients face significant barriers to accessing mainstream treatment. Even those in shelters or rooming houses lack a sufficiently safe or hygienic environment, and cannot appropriately dispose of the toxic chemotherapeutic waste.

Today's edition of the Healthydebate Weekly Digest features the work done by Dorval Medical FHT to deliver high quality of care, high capacity and lower than average costs through measurement and reporting.  Click here to read the story.

Demonstrating and Celebrating the Value of Family Health Teams – this is the focal point of the AFHTO 2012 Conference, and the reason for launching the AFHTO Bright Lights Awards program.  These awards recognize the leadership, outstanding work and significant progress being made to improve the value delivered by family health teams.

A collaboration between North York Family Health Team and North York General Hospital with funding from Cancer Care Ontario, North York Family Health Team and North York General Hospital have created a new survivorship program for patients with colorectal cancer.

Four AFHTO members are profiled as “Examples of success” found in the 2012 Report on Ontario’s Health System from Health Quality Ontario, released today:

The Queen’s Family Health Team (QFHT), an academic teaching clinic with 22 family physicians, 20 nursing and allied health members and 50+ family medicine residents rotating through the clinic, embarked on a quality improvement process in 2008.

QFHT has established a Quality Plan and framework to systematically improve quality across the team.

The team has met or exceeded the provincial targets set for:

On January 17, Globe and Mail columnist Adam Radwanski wrote about the upcoming MOHLTC-OMA negotiations, focusing on costs and value for money (echoing the Auditor General of Ontario’s report). Unfortunately he used the term “family health team” when he was refering to physicians in capitated models in his statement, “The province will continue trying to get more family doctors away from fee-for-service.

Aging at home the right way: Toronto Family Health Team’s Virtual Ward is the story that appears in the October 2011 issue of Hospital News. Click here to read the  Hospital News story. Click here for more background on SETFHT's Virtual Ward.

Wellington hospitals, Family Health Teams, Community Care Access Centres and Mental Health Services signed a collective agreement last Wednesday aimed at optimizing health and patient care in our rural communities. The local rural health partners include Groves Memorial Community Hospital, North Wellington Heath Care, Minto-Mapleton, Mount Forest and Upper Grand Family Health Teams, Waterloo Wellington Community Care Access Centre and Trellis Mental Health and Developmental Services.

Four AFHTO members are profiled in two Success Studies found in Quality Monitor 2011 Report on Ontario's Health System, released today: