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A New Kind of Health Care for a Healthier Community
It has truly been a milestone year for our hospital. I am happy to report that over the last 12 months, we have achieved a number of accomplishments that benefit our patients, our community and the hospital overall.
Last April we were still operating under our legacy names of The Credit Valley Hospital and Trillium Health Centre and had just begun work on a new strategy. As we considered our future, we asked ourselves, what do we need to do over the next five to 10 years to meet the growing need in our community? We received more than 23,000 answers when we consulted with our community.
Throughout these discussions, a consistent theme emerged – in order to support the diverse and growing communities of Mississauga and West Toronto, we must work in partnership to create a new kind of health care – one that is collaborative, connected and easy to navigate – with the patient at the centre. In December, we marked our first anniversary as one hospital with a new name, strategic vision and promise to create a new kind of health care for a healthier community.
With our new strategy as a road map, we are aligning services to our strategic priorities – high quality care, exceptional patient experience; right care, right place, right time; and research, innovation and education – and responding to the specific demographic needs of our community, particularly in the areas of children, seniors and chronic disease.
Over the past year, we have realized a number of benefits from this strategic direction and becoming one hospital. With our increased size and scale, we are using our resources even more efficiently, harnessing best practices of each founding hospital and applying them across all sites. Through this collaboration and sharing of knowledge we were able to:
- Reduce emergency wait times: despite serving 251,862 patients in our Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centre (8,400 more patients than the year before), emergency wait times were reduced by 10 per cent. To our patients, that's 4.5 hours less time spent in the waiting room.
- Improve access to care: in working with our LHIN and Ministry of Health partners, we were able to realign services to realize $12.5 million in funding that will support 20,772 additional patient visits.
- Improve quality of care: through standardization of best practices in discharge planning, skin and wound care, and infection prevention and control through cleaning.
- Expand programs: the Carlo Fidani Regional Cancer Centre introduced brachytherapy, a leading-edge cancer treatment. Brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy that is highly targeted and results in less tissue damage and a shorter treatment period for patients
- Ensure organizational sustainability: creating one leadership team resulted in a savings of approximately $3 million to reinvest in new positions in key areas such as quality improvement, risk management and professional practice.
- Improve sustainability of health care in our community: through the rewarding partnership with the University of Toronto, we are expanding undergraduate medical education by welcoming the first group of third-year medical students from the Mississauga Academy of Medicine (MAM) in August as they begin their formal clerkship training under the supervision of our physicians. This expansion builds on the success of the last two years of our partnership in educating first and second year learners.
While it has been a year of great accomplishment, there is more to do as growing patient demand meets reduced health care funding. Last year alone, we saw an increase of over 70,000 patient visits. Like most hospitals across the province, we are required to do more with less.
As providers of high quality care we will use our resources even more efficiently and take new and innovative approaches to health care, addressing the most pressing needs of our diverse community. By working together with our partners, I am confident that we will create a complete system of care that is organized around our patients. As partners in creating a new kind of health care, we are Better Together.
For a complete list of accomplishments from the past year please view the Trillium Health Partners 2012-13 Annual Report .
Key achievements from 2012-13 that support our strategic goals of quality», access» and sustainability»
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