Expanding primary healthcare priority for CKOHT’s new strategic plan

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Strengthening the comprehensive primary care system locally is at the core of the Chatham-Kent Ontario Health Team’s new five-year strategic plan.

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“This strategic plan introduces a new vision for the Ontario Health Team, which is healthy, thriving communities supported by a connected and person-centred system of care,” said CKOHT executive transformation lead Melissa Sharpe-Harrigan during the release of the plan on Thursday.

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Noting the plan included input from more than 200 individuals and more than 600 members of the public who shared their thoughts through an online survey, she said the guiding principles have been refreshed in the process.

“They start with people and community first, so partnering with patients, caregivers, health-care practitioners and the communities across Chatham-Kent to co-design care,” Sharpe-Harrigan said.

Co-designing care is a part of the process the OHT uses to take a population health-based approach to planning, which involves looking at data and information very specific to Chatham-Kent, she said.

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She used the BridgeCare project, which provides residents without a family doctor or nurse practitioner access to primary care during weekend walk-in clinics, as an example.

“When we designed how that clinic would function, we brought together patients, physicians, partners within organizations and we mapped out what it was that we were looking to achieve and how we could build that,” Sharpe-Harrigan said.

She added co-designing care helps provide a local health-care system that is “far more patient-friendly, that amplifies equitable voices and certainly is one that is a made in Chatham-Kent solution for challenges and issues that we are seeing in Chatham-Kent.”

Expanding primary care includes having a system that integrates home, community and social care supports with the goal of ensuring “nobody has a wrong door when they are coming into the health-care system,” Sharpe-Harrigan said.

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Noting it shouldn’t matter if you are seeing somebody at the hospital or working through the social services, she said “Our partners across the OHT should be able to navigate patients and their caregivers and family members to the right service across the continuum of the health-care system.”

Another priority of the new strategic plan is embedding equity and inclusion in local health care, which includes trauma-informed care that comes from learning from people with lived experiences.

“A notable goal under this priority is to strengthen partnerships with First Nations communities,” Sharpe-Harrigan said.

While she wouldn’t commit medical facilities to area First Nation communities, she said, “As we deepen our partnerships with First Nation communities or urban Indigenous, we expect that we will see more program services and certainly support for facilities that could exist in those communities.”

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She pointed to the MobileCare bus bringing clinics on a regular basis to Delaware First Nation in Moraviantown and Walpole Island First Nation, which is in response to identified needs and gaps in services.

As for the plan specifically addressing addiction and mental health, Sharpe-Harrigan said, “When we talk about improving comprehensive primary care that does mean connecting health and social services together.”

She added there is a specific goal and objective around mental health and addictions.

“We plan to address addictions and mental health challenges in Chatham-Kent through the strategic plan by implementing a community drug strategy,” she said.

Sharpe-Harrigan said the OHT recognizes, when looking at these issues, “there is a continuum of care that is needed and a multi-faceted approach in order to improve outcomes around addictions, mental health and housing.”

The strategic plan is available online at www.ckoht.ca/strategic-plan.

eshreve@postmedia.com

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