Patients and staff alike at Summerside’s Harbourside Heath Centre were frustrated because patients couldn’t book the appointments they wanted, so Nancy MacFadyen and her team are helping to make things better.

“Our booking system needed work,” said MacFadyen, the clinical nurse lead. “We needed to get some real data, starting from when the ap‐pointment is scheduled to when the patient is actually seen – and all the steps in be‐tween.”

Harbourside’s “Booking with Ease” project is one of three Health PEI staff‐driven im‐provement efforts currently underway that use Lean Six Sigma quality‐improvement principles. MacFadyen is train‐

ing to become a project leader or “yellow belt,” which she says has been challenging but rewarding.

“The training has been over‐whelming at times because you have to do all of the study

and organizing in addition to your normal work,” she said. “But it will be worth it be‐cause we can apply these new ways of thinking to so many other parts of the health cen‐tre.”

Health PEI’s staff‐driven im‐provement journey began last year with three pilot projects that were completed in July 2011. A second round of five projects finished this past spring.

This stage of the journey ends for MacFadyen on Nov. 1 when the Harbourside pro‐ject’s first phase is complete – along with the other two cur‐rent projects at PCH Maternal Newborn and Public Health and at QEH Health Records – and she earns her yellow belt. So far 17 staff have been trained as yellow belts with an eventual goal of 60 by 2016, which will allow the system to build enough capacity to con‐duct continuous quality im‐provements.

October 2012 Volume 2 Issue 4

Staff­driven improvement lessons catching on

MyHR takes ‘notice’ out of pay notice

Nancy MacFadyen checks Harbourside Health Centre’s “Booking with Ease” communications board.

The days of paper‐based pay notices are numbered thanks to an online system that is coming soon to your site – if it hasn’t already.

Accessible through a tab on the Insite Portal (https://insite.gov.pe.ca) being used across government – the “MyHR” system allows employees to track their biweekly pay as well as vacation and leave balances and update their personal information electronically. It’s conven‐ient, timely, efficient and secure, says Health PEI Comptroller Pat Ryan.

“MyHR allows you to see your pay and current benefit balances as soon as they’re calculated instead of waiting for your pay stub to be printed, couriered to your work site and delivered to you,” Ryan said. “You can view it via the Inter‐net wherever you are.”

Also available to managers through MyHR are reports that allow viewing of vacant positions and their status and employees’ benefit bank history and overtime.

The service was introduced in a pilot pro‐ject for excluded staff and at Garfield Street, and it will now be offered to all staff of Health PEI, with West Prince and Kings County sites going next. Detailed information on signing up for this service will be available for staff in these areas in the coming weeks. For questions on MyHR, contact Pat Ryan at pgryan@gov.pe.ca or call 368‐4921.

To prepare for the visit of Accreditation Canada’s surveyors in September 2013, Health PEI quality team members and staff will complete a self‐assessment survey.

All the quality teams and many staff members including physicians will be asked to answer the online question‐naire through the Accreditation Canada portal. Each team will have at least one questionnaire to answer related to their area of expertise; for example, the emergency team will complete a ques‐tionnaire related to emergency services.

Teams may be asked to answer one or more questionnaires, which are anony‐mous and take approximately 40 min‐utes. The results will help guide Health PEI quality initiatives and assist Accredi‐tation Canada to understand our clinical and administrative processes and iden‐tify areas that may need improvement or growth.

The dates for completing the self assess‐ments will be determined by each of the quality teams. Any information needed to complete the questionnaire – such as Internet access, username, and organ‐izational code – will be communicated to staff through posters, bulletin boards and business cards.

The input of physicians and staff is criti‐cal to ensuring that Health PEI meets or surpasses national quality standards and continues to provide the safest, highest‐quality care possible to Islanders.

Since announcing that I am leaving to assume the leader‐ship of Saskatchewan’s Re‐gina‐Qu’Appelle Health Re‐gion, some have questioned why Health PEI should bother to continue with key initia‐tives intended to increase the quality, safety, and sustain‐ability of our health system.

Government, on behalf of all Islanders, established the vision and strategic direction for the health system in 2009. Health PEI was created in 2010 to help achieve this vi‐sion. It is a vision based on the best available research, data and comparisons with other provinces and nations. The Corpus Sanchez Interna‐tional Consultancy’s 2008 report “A Call to Action: A Plan for Change” laid out in great detail the sound basis for creating an integrated health system on Prince Ed‐

ward Island.

As you read our vision state‐ment you will see the best of this research summarized. It uses terms like “single, inte‐grated system of care,” “enhancing access,” “refocusing on primary health care,” and essentially provid‐ing the right care, by the right provider, in the right place.

Our direction has been vali‐dated by national health‐care leaders such as Dr. Jeff Turnbull of The Ottawa Hospi‐tal, who said the following at last year’s Health PEI annual general meeting:

“You should be very proud of your health care system. I think this can easily be the best health care system in Canada. We are all looking to your experiment – we truly believe this is the direction we should all be on.”

The Health PEI Board of Di‐rectors – a group of 11 Island‐ers committed to guiding this health system and ensuring that Islanders receive the best possible care we can provide – fully believes in where we are going and the thinking behind how we got here.

As I have said before, others will see the world‐class work you are doing and become eager to help elevate Health PEI to the next level. Who‐ever is given the privilege of leading this organization into the future will be continuing

on a course charted by the best available evidence that is being closely watched by the rest of the nation.

We all have a responsibility to work together to achieve this vision on behalf of those we serve.

2|page

Accreditation Canada survey just a year away

We will stay on course, no matter who is steering the ship

Keith Dewar, CEO of Health PEI.

page|3

Quality of care and patient safety will be front and center during Health PEI’s second annual general meeting on Nov. 14.

Keynote speaker G. Ross Baker, PhD – director of graduate studies at the Uni‐versity of Toronto’s Centre for Patient Safety – is a na‐tional expert on the topic. He co‐led the landmark 2004 Canadian Adverse Events study published in the Cana‐dian Medical Association Journal and served on the committee that recom‐mended creating the Cana‐dian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI).

“Ensuring the quality and safety of the health care we provide to Islanders is the board’s highest priority,” said

Leo Steven, chair of the Health PEI Board of Directors. “Dr. Baker’s na‐tional insight will give us a fresh

perspec‐tive that will help with our ongoing efforts to improve patient safety throughout our health sys‐tem.”

With the theme “Safe, Quality Health Care in Tight Financial Times,” the meeting will be‐

gin at 6:30 p.m. at Murchison Centre in Charlottetown. It

will be streamed on the web and

viewers

can ask questions

via live chat. The web stream also will be

shown at Prince County Hos‐pital, Western Hospital and Kings County Memorial Hos‐pital where viewers will be able to submit questions to the meeting electronically.

The meeting web page is www.healthpei.ca/annualmeeting.

Newest board member is from O’Leary Rhonda Smallman of O’Leary was re‐cently appointed to the Health PEI Board of Directors.

A retired school teacher, Smallman is active in her community. Board Chair Leo Steven says she brings an interest in children’s health care and another west‐ern Prince Edward Island perspective to the 11‐member board, which governs Health PEI and advises the Minister of Health and Wellness on policy issues.

Smallman was appointed to complete the unexpired term of Geraldine MacKendrick, who resigned earlier this year. The term ends in March 2013 along with the terms of several other board members.

The board has created a nominations task group to guide processes to replace retiring board members. Other board members are Vice Chair Gordon McKay;

Dr. Marvin Clark; Kenneth Ezeard; Phyllis Horne; Denis Marantz; Dr. Donna Murnaghan; James Revell; Dr. Kinsey Smith; and Amie Swallow‐MacDonald.

For more information on the Health PEI board, visit www.healthpei.ca/board.

Patient safety will be focus of annual meeting

Rhonda Smallman.

Send us your comments and story

ideas! If you have a story for us – or just an idea for one –

e‐mail us at bpchatfield@gov.pe.ca or phone us at 902‐368‐6135.

www.healthpei.ca

Did you know that all past issues of The Health Beat are available on The

Manager’s Resource Center: www.healthpei.ca/mrc (click on “Did You Hear?”)

G. Ross Baker, PhD.

4|page

Resilience has been defined as “the capacity of a system or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances.”

Everyone knows the health‐care industry is undergoing deep change in almost every area. These industry‐level changes affect the Prince Ed‐ward Island health system and focus on improving system results of quality, safety, and efficiency, as well as broader population health outcomes overall.

The 2012‐2013 theme for the Advisory Committee on Organ‐

izational Development (ACOD) is “Leadership, Resilience and Adaptability: Achieving System Transformation in the Pursuit of Excellence in Health Care.”

Change is difficult. Industry

changes affect systems, groups and individuals. However, deep changes in other sectors – such as the airline and auto‐mobile manufacturing indus‐tries – have created far greater

value for customers, superior safety, and reduced waste.

Adaptive skills and habits at all levels will help create an envi‐ronment where change can happen in a healthy and pro‐ductive way.

Leadership development will continue to be a focus for Health PEI given its impor‐tance to achieving positive results through change, but ACOD will also explore ap‐proaches to strengthen team and or workplace resilience as well this year. Watch for more details on this as specific pilot projects are defined.

Queens Home Care and the QEH have completed a one‐year Enhanced Home Care for Frail Seniors pilot program, and by most accounts it was successful.

“I consider myself to have been ex‐tremely fortunate to have participated in the pilot,” one client wrote in a client satisfaction survey. “I cannot over em‐phasize the tremendous sense of relief my family and I felt knowing I would re‐ceive the care I required, in my own home, to help me regain my strength

and return to normal activity.”

Over the last year, 36 clients were ac‐cepted into the program. It offers addi‐tional hours of home care services, dedi‐cated care coordination and occupa‐tional therapy for frail seniors who have been admitted to the QEH.

Clients receive the enhanced service in two tiers: in the first weeks after hospital discharge, care is convalescent and re‐storative according to the client’s care

plan; in the second tier, the focus shifts to keeping clients at home safely with the goal of reducing re‐admission to acute care and reducing or delaying ad‐mission to long‐term care.

Until the pilot is formally evaluated, the program continues to accept new clients with some limitations on program capac‐ity. For more information, contact a Home Care liaison coordinator at the QEH or call Queens Home Care at 368‐4790.

Strengthening resilience ­ in ourselves and our organization by Garth Waite

Beginning this fall through spring 2013, Health PEI lead‐ers will benefit from a series of peer‐driven workshops fo‐cused on building knowledge of day‐to‐day management practices.

Topics range from finance processes to staff scheduling practices, quality manage‐ment, and communication protocols. The effort is a pilot project of the Advisory Com‐

mittee on Organizational De‐velopment (ACOD).

Workshops will provide practi‐cal, hands‐on knowledge con‐cerning day to day manage‐ment skills. The half‐day ses‐sions will be held at eastern and western locations to mini‐mize travel costs and time out of the office.

The course calendar will be available October 1 on the Manager’s Resource Centre at

www.healthpei.ca/mrc/. To register, contact Claire Mathe‐son at cemathe‐son@gov.pe.ca or by calling 368‐5375.

In the coming year ACOD will also coordinate many of the leadership development ac‐tivities implemented in previ‐ous years including:

Ceridian leadership devel‐opment cohorts (20 seats per cohort): Innovative

Leadership; Fundamentals of People Management; Conflict Management; and Negotiating Change.

Leading Workplace Com‐munities Project ‐ under‐way. Next cohort in 2013.

Responsive Leadership for a Diverse Workplace (12 HPEI seats) – underway.

Learning sessions focus on day­to­day management skills

Enhanced home care pilot wraps up

Garth Waite is Health PEI’s organizational development lead.