TORONTO – The province has approved applications for new Ontario Health Teams in the Thunder Bay and and Dryden-Red Lake-Sioux Lookout areas.
They will be known as the City & District of Thunder Bay Ontario Health Team and the Kiiwetinoong Healing Waters Ontario Health Team, respectively.
Ontario Health Teams are intended to allow healthcare providers and organizations to coordinate efforts in addressing gaps in how to better serve community health needs.
"I am excited to see the City and District of Thunder Bay receive an Ontario Health Team," said Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Kevin Holland in a statement. "Among other health care [needs], the team will focus on developing and implementing streamlined access to community mental health and addiction services. This is something that is much needed in my riding."
According to Ontario Health, the teams are also meant to encourage public and private healthcare organizations to work together to find a model of care that best suits the need of their community, while also being “fiscally accountable for the healthcare dollars they spend.”
Funding for these shared organizations will be focused on meeting health care targets, with “lines of accountability and funding... focused and simplified.”
To do this, Ontario Health will provide healthcare data and analytical support to groups as appropriate, including access to performance measurement data and population and financial analytics (such as data on costing, health service utilization, referral patterns and market sharing mapping) "so that they can take a population health approach to re-designing care.”
As stated in the Health Care Team guidebook, providers will be able to offer safe and innovative practices that do not have to “contend with administrative or bureaucratic hurdles that do not add value and which prevent them from delivering better, more coordinated care for patients.”
One example is easier access to patient information from one service to the next. Ontario Health Teams will be able to share patient data between healthcare providers “for a continuouss patient story,” Ontario Health states.
“Our government is adding Ontario Health Teams to serve the North, understand the unique health needs across the region and provide higher standards of care. I am confident that these investments will lead to better health outcomes for Northerners as we move forward with our transformative plan to build an integrated healthcare system centred on the needs of patients,” said Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford
