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The Picton Gazette THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2015
VOLUME 1 8 5 , N O . 11
InsIde
thiS weeK
Hospital@Home reshaping health care Pilot project keeps patients out of hospital, appears to offer efficiencies
County purchases King Street property
adam bramburger Staff writer
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If the numbers are any indication, Prince Edward County may again be pioneering a trend for the way primary health care services are offered in rural Ontario for years to come. On Tuesday, the Prince Edward Family Health Team (PEFHT) and representatives from Queen’s University’s Centre For Studies in Primary Care presented a very positive review of the PEFHT’s Hospital@Home collaboration, which is now 18 months into a two-year pilot project. Under the pilot project, the PEFHT took referrals of patients who would have been hospitalized and set up the basic elements of a hospital in their homes. A care team, led by a primary care physician or a nurse practitioner, would work with the family to set up a care plan for each patient. Partner agencies would then offer staff to carry out the plan and link patients to necessary resources. “The program is intended to prevent hospital admissions and decrease hospital inpatient days,” said Brad Gunn, the nurse practitioner working on the Hospital@Home team. Gunn said the idea was to provide hospital inpatient level of care in the home environment. He said a majority of the 130 patients admitted suffered from congestive heart failure, diabetes, cancer, or the lung condition COPD — several of the patients admitted had two or more of those diagnoses at once — and many were elderly, palliative, or had acute conditions prior to entering. “The main thing is they’d otherwise require hospitalization,” he said. Those patients could see registered nurses visit up to three times a day, they could have house visits from a pharmacist, and they would have arrangements for clinical services like bloodworm and imaging done right from their bedside. They’d also have priority access to PEFHT resources. Each day, there would
Chad Ibbotson
Staff writer
grateful paIr Bruce and Linda Williamson share their positive experiences with the Prince Edward Family Health Team’s Hospital@Home program. Following hospitalization in Kingston, Bruce entered the program and he credits the program’s organization and his home environment for his successful recovery. (Adam Bramburger/Gazette staff)
also be teleconferencing between members of a patient’s personal care team to discuss their assessments and to give progress updates to family and all involved. That may sound too good to be true, perhaps even costlier than traditional medicine, but the statistics would suggest otherwise. Researchers from Queen’s studied a three-month cohort of patients admitted and compared them to a control group in care at Quinte Healthcare Corporation (QHC) hospitals during the 2013 fiscal year. The patients were in the same relative age groups and had matching primary diagnoses. Those under the care of in the Hospital@Home program stayed in care for an average of 9.65 days and the per day cost of care — including dedicated human resources, transportation and supply costs, and all of the nursing and therapy services contracted to St. Elizabeth Health Care through the South East Community Care Access Centre (SE CCAC)— was $418.72. The cost of the average care cycle was $4,061.78. Comparatively, those in QHC
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stayed for an average of 7.033 days at a cost of $730.03 per day or a total cost of $5,134.88. Per day, the research found the Hospital@Home program saved $311, which was over 42 per cent less. The cost of the full stay was just under 21-per-cent less. Some other numbers shared suggested that 28 patients were diverted from the hospital entirely. A study of 52 patients in July 2014 showed that following time in the Hospital@Home program, participants experienced a 40per-cent decrease in emergency visits, a 79-per-cent decrease in hospital admissions, and a 50-per-cent decrease in re-admissions. PEFHT executive director Stephanie MacLaren said the statistics show the program — which is a collaboration with the CCAC, QHC, St. Elizabeth Health Care, Queen’s, and community agencies like Community Care For Seniors, Hospice, the Alzheimer Society, and Community Living — is doing what it set out to do. “This program is much congruent with the ministry of health’s mandate. They’ve been aggressively talking about their need to transfer resources and
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E S TAT E
services to the community. This is a great example of that and what it means to build a health-care system grounded in a strong foundation of primary care,” she said. “I think this is a tremendously innovative example of what the future of primary care could look like in Ontario.” Patients and caregivers seem to agree. The Centre For Studies in Primary Health also surveyed those involved with the program and found 94 per cent of patients and 78 per cent of caregivers were very satisfied with the level of care they received. They indicated in surveys and interviews being pleased with access to care and they felt involvement kept individuals out of hospitals and long-term care homes longer. Bruce and Linda Williamson were among the families involved when Bruce was hospitalized. He spent three tough weeks at Kingston General Hospital before he was released into his home. He said the care he received there was invaluable moving forward. “I honestly feel I wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for these people.”
See CARE, page 23
S E C T I O N
The municipality has purchased a King Street property with the intention of supplementing parking in downtown Picton. The purchase was approved following a closed session meeting on March 10. Mayor Robert Quaiff confirmed this week the municipality has purchased 55 King Street from John Switzer Fuels Ltd. at a cost of $300,000, which was within the $320,000 budget set in January. The move could create 50–58 new parking spaces in the Picton core. Quaiff said the purchase is contingent on the results of an environmental assessment of the property. Quaiff said the municipality is hoping to open the parking lot as soon as possible, but that will hinge on the results of the environmental assessment. The scope of any remedial work at the site would also depend on the assessment, he said. “It all depends on this environmental study that has to be taken care of first,” he said. It's not yet certain whether the parking will be metred, he said. “There will be a report coming to council later on once we take over the ownership,” Quaiff said. “We'll get a report back with all the information as to what staff are recommending happens there.” A parking study conducted in 2010 by IBI Group recommended the municipality invest in offstreet parking. “In the long-term, if alternative parking lots or alternative transportation methods are made available, pricing of downtown off-street parking lots would be a useful tool to encourage changes in parking behaviour and free up parking spaces in the downtown core for shortstay use,” the study says.
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