People across Ontario and North America are keen to learn about the ground-breaking advances AFHTO members are making to meaningfully measure primary care. AFHTO submitted nine abstracts to four major conferences, and all were accepted. See the slides and posters linked within the descriptions below.

AFHTO Members: Experienced in Building Collaboration Patients First calls for collaboration across subLHIN regions. It also calls for spreading measurement for quality improvement and performance monitoring. AFHTO members’ experience in building QIDS partnerships (about 150 AFHTO member organizations are actively involved) provides a foundation for both these objectives.

AFHTO Members Expanding Access Within Their Communities As government implements the vision of Patients First, the creation of sub-LHIN regions will enable a shift to a population-based approach to health care planning and delivery. It is hoped through these system-level changes patients will receive more timely access to, and better integration of, primary care, and better coordination and continuity of services.

“We felt that it was the best way to see where we rate according to other teams to use for improvement work within our team”- AFHTO Member

Ontario’s primary care sector is moving towards a more comprehensive, patient-centered approach to quality health care delivery. To fully understand whether primary care has reached this goal of quality, there needs to be a way to measure both the comprehensiveness and patient-centered aspects of care.

AFHTO’s Algorithm Project was established in 2014 with a small group of QIDS Specialists interested in data mapping. The group quickly realized that there was a need to develop and test standard EMR queries to enhance the ability of all teams to extract and analyze EMR data, and to facilitate data clean-up initiatives.

Access to data in primary care is difficult, largely because the quality of data in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is poor. While it is important to improve the quality of data going into EMRs, it is also worthwhile to get better at using the data and systems as they are. Over 30 Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists (QIDSS) are dispersed across the province to help members access and use data better to improve care, supported by our Quality Improvement in Primary Care Community of Practice.

Over 30 Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialists (QIDSS) are dispersed across the province to help members access and use data better to improve care, supported by our Quality Improvement Decision Support (QIDS) program.

Theme Description: Patients and caregivers are increasingly looking to be engaged and consulted in their own care. Primary care is finding innovative ways to support patient decision-making about their care and support for self-care. Presentations in this stream will include topics such as education programs for patients and their families; patient involvement in care planning; tools and coaching for patients to manage their own care; and using patient feedback to achieve a seamless patient experience.