A Tribute to Barbara

Transcription

1 July I ssu e 3.May FHT NEWSLETTER Duncan Mill R o ad North York, ON M3B 3S6 T: , F: A Tribute to Barbara The North York Family Health Team is deeply saddened by the passing of our colleague, Barbara. Barbara will be dearly missed by her co-workers and friends. From the beginning of her time with the NYFHT in September 2008, Barbara s passion for her work and her patients was unmistakable. On numerous occasions, Barbara s physicians received glowing comments from patients on Barbara s care, warmth, intelligence and compassion. Barbara once commented that the most rewarding part of her work here at the NYFHT was working with patients to help them translate the science of their medical concerns into actionable changes in their eating patterns. Barbara s passion for nutrition and the field of dietetics was indeed palpable. Barbara s energy and enthusiasm was felt by every individual in our offices. She had an abundance of imaginative, forward thinking ideas. Barbara was also a very kind and generous person. Some of you may recall that Barbara took it upon herself to put the time and thought into giving members of our staff personalized holiday gifts this past December. It was no secret that Barbara s greatest love was food, and rightly so, as she was a tremendously gifted cook and baker. During various staff meetings, Barbara volunteered to bring in her creations to share with staff members. Everything from her cheesecake with crème-fraîche top and fresh fruit, to banana chocolate chip bread and channa masala had staff members mouths watering. Barbara s passing has left a great void at the NYFHT. Our thoughts and prayers are with her entire family during this difficult time. She will be dearly missed by all. Barbara Elaine Manilla

2 2 P a g e North York Family Health Team to Celebrate Official Grand Opening! Inside This Issue Let s Celebrate our official Grand Opening on Tuesday, September 14 th! Together with your colleagues and staff, come join us with David Caplan, MPP to help cut the ribbon during the official opening ceremony. NYFHT to Celebrate official Opening 2 Announcements 2 IM/IT in our FHT Challenges & Success 3 Social Work Services 4 Diabetes Program Update 5 The celebration will begin at 6:30 pm and should wrap up by 8:00 pm at 240 Duncan Mill Road, 7 th Floor. Please RSVP by August 23 to Helen at hkubalek@nyfht.com, or ~ Refreshments will be served. Announcements Stacey Rossiter is back from her maternity leave and has resumed her duties as assistant to Clarys and Kimberly. Welcome back Stacey! Helen Kubalek is staying with our FHT Helen will continue to be the person to contact for all 7 th floor issues and will be working on special projects in the fall and winter. Lisa Fernandes and her husband are the proud parents of a new baby girl named Sophia. Sophia arrived on June 14 at 6 lbs 12 ounces! Congratulations to Lisa and her new family! If you have any ideas for our Newsletter title, please send them through! Also, if you have any items you would like to mention in our next edition, please send them through to Helen at hkubalek@nyfht.com

3 3 P a g e IM/IT in our FHT: Challenges and Success Our FHT functions with 2 EMR systems and 5 servers. Two of our FHO/FHN use Practice Solutions and three FHN/FHO use Nightingale. We have a total of 5 servers in place. That is much more complex than most FHTs where there is the same EMR for everyone and a single server. Our FHT s challenges in terms of connectivity and data management are significant. However, we have made huge progress and we can celebrate significant success: Last year as part of the capital project, the Ministry of Health fully funded IT equipment for FHT AHPs right now each AHP has access to a computer. This was an important first step! As of June, our FHT AHPs have been connected to any of the EMRs and servers remotely. This is a huge success. For example, it means that a social worker can see a patient at 240 Duncan Mill and access the chart, no matter which physician has referred the patient. This kind of remote connectivity has been established for both our Nightingale and our Practice Solutions users. Some of our AHPs are required to work with 2 EMRs, accessing 5 servers. Their flexibility and understanding of our system is appreciated. The FHT is providing training through Nightingale and Practice Solutions, and we will be having training sessions in the early fall. As you are all aware, Tracy Matthews is continuing to work on the diabetes registry under the lead of Rebecca Stoller. This is another successful step in the development of our capacity to work with data and to support our physicians quality improvement initiatives. Simplifying IT Our IT/IM committee is taking a break during the summer, however Michelle Greiver and the IT leads from each FHO/FHN will be starting to meet again in September. This is another important building block for our FHT! A special thank you must be given to Andrew Levstein, our IT consultant. Andrew works as an independent consultant with many of our physicians and also with our FHT. Andrew worked tirelessly both to set up all our IT systems on the 7 th floor and also to set up the connectivity. We are all very thankful for Andrew s support and hard work to get us to this point in our development! We look forward to continued success in our IT/IM development!

4 4 P a g e NYFHT Social Work Services Our Social workers are very busy and are the foundation of our mental health program. We continually receive positive feedback from our physicians on the work and support that they provide to our patients and to the teams. They help individuals and families achieve optimal psychosocial functioning through short-term counseling, advocacy and community referrals. Our social workers see patients for 6 to 8 sessions. They book 5 to 6 patients per day and enter documentation directly on the patient s electronic chart. On average, each social worker receives 20 new referrals per week from their group of physicians. Some of our social workers carry a case load of up to 40 cases, some higher than this at times. The majority of cases are for depression, followed by anxiety disorders and situational crisis. Our social workers cannot take on long-term cases but will support individuals to be connected to the appropriate long-term resources. We have piloted some Mindfulness CBT groups that have been very successful. We will be reviewing the evaluations and how to best proceed with group sessions. We have funding for a psychiatrist one session per week (3 hours). We are still trying to determine how best to utilize our psychiatry funding. Dr. Levinsky has supported our Mindfulness groups in the spring. A year ago, the Mental Health Working Group, lead by Flora Riccuiti could not implement their proposed plan because of the limited capacity for our social workers to take on more work. We requested from the Ministry more social work support but did not receive it. We are hoping to review, with the working group, the proposed plan and develop a more comprehensive mental health program. Many thanks to Ramona, Paula, Diane and Heather for all their work! From left to right: Ramona Marin, Paula Lipkus, Diane Petrofski, and Heather Rambharack

5 5 P a g e Diabetes Program Update By Dr. K. Wintemute All FHT s in Ontario have a Chronic Disease focus and ours is Diabetes. We have several concurrent efforts taking place to improve Diabetic Care for our patients: 1. The development of registries of our diabetic patients and their stats (HbA1c, LDL, BP, eye care): Tracy Matthews is doing this. This will allow you to quickly identify those patients not at target and strategize with the team around how to look after them. This work is essential to quality improvement in all of our practices. 2. Participation as study subjects in a University Health Network study: The Division of Endocrinology at UHN has developed a series of educational sessions aimed at improving diabetic care at the primary care level. They are studying how well this works in Family Health Teams. Offices that have identified Diabetes as their Clinical Priority Program have been attending. Other offices are also welcome. The third session will be in the fall and will be about Insulin Titration. Dr. Rebecca Stoller has been our primary liaison with UHN. If you have not been involved already and would like to get involved, please let me or Dr. Stoller know. 3. The development of a central FHT diabetes program: our FHT is waiting for a Ministry decision on the possibility of receiving more funding for a central diabetes team. This would give us funding for a central clinic to look after our poorly controlled diabetics. We are waiting for a final decision and details on timing. This would translate as a dedicated Nurse and Dietitian, which means that we will essentially have a bit more allied health funding great news for our team and for our patients!