Dec 19, 2024
If you haven’t already heard, QI Power Hour is a free monthly quality improvement webinar series offered by HQC that aims to build QI knowledge and inspiration in Saskatchewan’s health care system and beyond. What started as a learning series for a small group of quality improvement specialists in Saskatchewan’s health care system in 2015 is now attracting improvement champions from across Canada and around the world.
This past year saw record numbers of people joining us for sessions and signing up for our QI Power Hour newsletter. If you missed out on the live events, don’t fret! The QI Power Hour webinars are saved on our website so you can catch up on all of the great insights – at a time that works for you. Speaking of records, our webinars were off the charts this year and we thought we’d highlight our top sessions (consider it our gift to you). We’ve also included bonus content for each session – key videos, articles, and other resources – so you can go deeper on the topics you’re most interested in.
Here are the Top 6 QI Power Sessions from 2018
- Connected Care strategy – The Saskatchewan journey toward improved patient flow
- 10 “Simple” Ways to improve patient care: Lessons learned from Saskatchewan’s Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow Initiative
- Improving community health and well-being: Hub tables in Saskatchewan
- Increase your success rate with QI: The Highly Adoptable Improvement model and toolkit
- High-need, high-cost patients in Saskatchewan: What we’re learning about their needs and health service use
- Thinking upstream: Intersectoral quality improvement for better health and wellness
1. Connected Care Strategy – The Saskatchewan Journey Towards Improved Patient Flow
Speakers
- Graham Fast, Lead (former), Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow Initiative
- Sheila Anderson, Executive Director of Urban Primary Health Care Services, Saskatchewan Health Authority
Session description
Graham and Sheila described how getting to the root causes of emergency department wait times led to an implementation strategy unique to the Saskatchewan context. The Connected Care Strategy evolved from the Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow Initiative in Saskatchewan, which was launched in 2012. Connected Care is a made-in-Saskatchewan solution to bridge the gap between community care and hospitals, through focused quality improvement efforts in each of these settings.
Connected Care is about enhancing team-based care in hospitals and community, and using an evidence-based approach to transition patients from one care team to another, across the continuum of care. Participants learned about the development of the overarching strategy guiding the Connected Care work, as well as examples of on-the-ground implementation challenges and successes, both in hospitals as well as community settings.
Recommended resources
- What is Connected Care? (Video)
- Measuring the impact of Connected Care (Video)
- Seniors Home Visits pilots in Saskatoon, Regina (Video)
- Connected Community Care in Regina (Video)
- Seniors First program in Saskatoon (Video)
- The story of Regina’s Accountable Care Unit pilot (Video)
- Early results of Accountable Care Unit at St. Paul’s Hospital, Saskatoon (Video)
2. 10 “Simple” Ways to improve patient care: Lessons learned from Saskatchewan’s Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow Initiative
Speakers
- Suann Laurent, Chief Operating Officer, Saskatchewan Health Authority
- Sharon Garratt, Vice President Integrated Urban Health and Chief Nursing Officer, Saskatchewan Health Authority
- Adrienne Danyliw, Project and Policy Consultant, Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow, Health Quality Council
- Kyla Avis, Project Consultant, Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow, Health Quality Council.
Session description
The Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow team at Health Quality Council was formed in response to a challenge from the provincial government for Saskatchewan’s health system to aggressively reduce emergency department wait times. Through the work of this team, it was clear that the focus needed to be on how patients move through hospitals and other parts of the healthcare system.
In this session, HQC and the Saskatchewan Health Authority shared reflections on the work of the Emergency Department Waits and Patient Flow Team over the past six years. The guest speakers talked about lessons learned throughout and the processes that led to new insights for the team. They provided examples of how these lessons have carried forward and are being actively applied to areas across the province. And they discussed improvement ideas that could be tried in other local contexts to move the learnings into action.
Recommended resources
- 10 “simple” ways to improve patient care: Saskatchewan teams in action
- Initiating conversations about Connected Care: the Lessons Learned Infographic
- Lessons Learned from ED Waits and Patient Flow Initiative: Improving patient flow system wide
3. Improving community health and well-being: Hub tables in Saskatchewan
Speakers
- Matthew Gray, Community Safety and Well-Being, Integrated Justice Services, Government of Saskatchewan
- Sarah Collins, Community Safety and Well-Being, Integrated Justice Services, Government of Saskatchewan
Session description
A teacher talks to a parent about a student sleeping in class; a nurse checks a patient’s vitals after an overdose; an addictions worker councils their client on the harms of alcohol; police respond to a home where neighbours hear and see things that concern them. What none of these professionals know is that they share a client; her name is Jessica and Jessica has a secret.
Since 2011 Hub tables across Saskatchewan have met twice weekly to address the needs of thousands of Jessicas. Professionals from a variety of disciplines discuss specific situations regarding citizens facing elevated risk and then develop immediate, coordinated, and integrated responses through the mobilization of resources.
In this session, guest speakers Matthew Gray and Sarah Collins talked about the creation of Hub tables across the province, valuable lessons learned, and how Hub tables might evolve and improve as integrated services become the new normal for communities.
Recommended resources
- Saskatchewan’s Building Partnerships – Hub and COR (Centre of Responsibility) Model
- Community Mobilization Prince Albert
4. Increase your success rate with QI: The Highly Adoptable Improvement model and toolkit
Speaker
- Dr. Chris Hayes, Chief Medical Information Officer at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton and Associate Professor at McMaster University
Session description
The use of quality improvement has led to many advances in the delivery of health care. But the demand for improvement is increasing and many QI initiatives do not succeed or are not sustainable. To achieve real improvement, the change associated with QI needs to be sustainably adopted into practice. In this webinar, participants heard why some QI strategies lead to more sustained improvements. They were introduced to the Highly Adoptable Improvement model. And they learned some new tools for developing more sustainably adoptable improvement strategies.
Recommended resources
- Increase your success rate with QI: Designing for adoptability from the get-go
- Highly Adoptable Improvement
- Highly Adoptable Improvement (Assessment Guide; Assessment Worksheet; Suggested Actions and Tools; Clinical Vignette)
5. High-need, high-cost patients in Saskatchewan: What we’re learning about their needs and health service use
Speaker
- Meric Osman, Researcher, Health Quality Council
Session description
High-performing health systems routinely seek out and use data to help them understand their current state, identify opportunities for improvement, and determine if the changes they’re making are resulting in better patient care.
In Saskatchewan, we are using administrative data sets to gain a better understanding of high-need, high-cost patients in this province. The term “high-cost user” or “high-cost patient” is a technical term from the literature. We are all “cost users” of health care services. The health system incurs costs whenever we see our family doctor, have an annual checkup, fill a prescription, visit Emergency, or have surgery. High-cost patients are those individuals whose use of these and other services exceeds a defined threshold. Developing a clearer picture of how these patients are currently using services is an important first step in finding and testing different ways to meet their needs.
Participants learned about how “high-need, high-cost patients” are studied using administrative databases, the characteristics of high-need, high-cost patients, and health care patterns that may indicate patients with high needs that may accumulate high costs.
Recommended resources
- The Hot Spotters, by Atule Guwande
- Who Are the High-Cost Users? A Method for Person-Centred Attribution of Health Care Spending
- A 3-year study of high-cost users of health care
6. Thinking upstream: Intersectoral quality improvement for better health and wellness
Speaker
- Brandon Bennett, Principal Advisor, Improvement Science Consulting
Session description
Our health and wellbeing is about more than the curative practices performed within the health system. In this session, guest presenter Brandon Bennett highlighted 3 innovative programs that are improving health and well-being by working with populations in a cross-sectoral way, bringing together health care, education, judicial, and the social welfare systems:
- Kia Kaha: A primary care-based intervention in New Zealand that’s connecting community members with chronic care conditions, with the aim of reducing visits to Emergency Departments by alleviating depression.
- Helping Families Initiative: A cooperative intervention in Alabama that partners judicial circuits with school districts and social workers to address chronic absenteeism in schools, increase stability in low-income families, and prevent crime in communities.
- Cincinnati Child Poverty Collaborative: An ambitious new undertaking that is exploring the use of continuous improvement methods in the community, to stabilize families living in poverty and create a pathway for families with children to move out of poverty.
Recommended resources
Stay up to date with QI Power Hour
Do you want to become a part of a growing community of improvers in Saskatchewan and beyond? Subscribe to our QI Power Hour mailing list to stay in the know about upcoming sessions, and be the first to receive links to recordings and materials from sessions that you miss!
Have questions, or want to profile your work on an upcoming QI Power Hour? We’d love to hear from you! Contact Chelsea at cschwartz@hqc.sk.ca.
