We invite you, your colleagues and patients to participate in a conference program working group and earn a $50 discount on registration for the AFHTO 2015 Conference. Play a valuable role by discovering the thought leaders in your chosen topic area and by shaping the content of the AFHTO conference for your peers across the province. Please inform your colleagues, staff and patients so they have the opportunity to participate. Based on our experience, and feedback from last year’s conference, we strongly encourage patient participation in the conference working groups.

Mar. 23 – Lauded as the possible future of healthcare, Hospital @ Home is a partnership project with the aim to divert appropriate patients requiring inpatient care to a program that wraps the necessary care around the patient in their own home – ‘the right care at the right time in the right place’. The subject of an AFHTO 2014 conference presentation, the program provides services patients wouldn’t typically receive from home care, but would have access to in the hospital setting, and at significant cost savings.

Mar. 12 - Rapids FHT in Sarnia has initiated the Momentum program to empower families to change their eating and behaviour habits so children become healthier. The program is the first of its kind in the region and brings the whole family together with a team of health providers to build meal plans, develop healthy habits and cope with social pressures. They’re currently seeking families to participate in the program.

Mar. 11- AFHTO members were among the inaugural winners of The Change Foundation’s 20 Faces of Change Awards. The awards honour those who have inspired positive, patient-focused change in Ontario's healthcare system. Dr. Ed Kucharski, Sherbourne Health Centre FHT Dr.

There is a compelling association between comprehensive primary care and system efficiency and effectiveness. The lifelong work of the late Barbara Starfield observed that an investment in primary care was associated with improved system quality, equity and efficiency (reduced cost)^{[i],[ii],[iii] ,[iv]}. In British Columbia this efficiency was quantified by Marcus Hollander.

Feb. 25 - On The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Claudia Mariano, Nurse Practitioner at West Durham FHT and AFHTO Board Member, appeared on the show to discuss the need for increased support for recruitment & retention in primary care. The program, "Health Care in a Time of Austerity" focused on primary care reform in a time of fiscal restraint.

Feb. 19- Espanola and Area FHT’s Care of the Elderly Program is a pilot in which the team’s family physician, Dr. Hama Abdel-Salam pays an average 40 house calls a week to frail elderly patients. This results in better health outcomes for them, and reduced ER visits and lengths of stay at the hospital.

Feb. 17 - Nunatsiaq News interviewed Akausivik’s executive director, Connie Siedule on the team’s significance for the Inuit community and its recent independence from the Tungasuvvingat Inuit community health centre. The only Inuit FHT in Ontario, they address the often complex needs of their patients (in Inuktitut if needed or desired), diverting them from emergency care where most Inuit patients would go before they opened.

Feb. 17 – Provincial funding for Barrie and Community FHT’s pilot project, Most Valuable Player (MVP) Clinic was announced last Thursday. The clinic gives priority to unattached medically complex patients. Each patient (the MVP) is supported through a process that provides an example for interprofessional collaboration. Click here for the Barrie Examiner article.

Feb. 5 - Almost overnight, 51 AFHTO members have taken up a new tool to extract data from any custom forms in PS Suite EMR, something that was not possible for teams to do previously. The tool emerged from the Innovation project developed by the East Wellington FHT and has spread like wildfire via Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists (QIDSS) in family health teams. As a result, Dr.