THUNDER BAY -- The five pillars of Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre’s newly unveiled strategic plan include increased attention on the patient experience, Aboriginal and seniors’ health, comprehensive clinical care and dealing with the growing needs in acute mental health care.
Hospital interim president and CEO William McCready said the creation of the plan involved consultations with more than 1,300 people, including staff, patients and community partners.
“This was all based on a very thorough look at the health-care needs of the population we serve,” McCready said on Tuesday, as he helped unveil the multi-pronged plan to the public.
“If you’re going to have a plan like this, you really have to listen to the people who need the care you’re going to give. We needed to have patients, we needed to have other health-care organizations, we needed to have academic institutions, we needed to have our staff. All these people had to contribute to talking about these goals. And of course when you do that, you hear all sorts of ideas.”
While Aboriginal care was addressed in the most recent strategic plan, it needed an even more specific focus this time around, McCready said.
Twenty per cent of the region’s population identify as Aboriginal, and their health-care needs tend to be greater than the non-Aboriginal population’s.
“They have higher suicide rates, they have higher addiction rates. They have higher chronic disease rates, such as diabetes. And furthermore their complications from diseases like diabetes are much worse,” McCready said, pointing to higher amputation levels as just one example.
The plan includes increasing screening rates, co-ordinated follow-up in Aboriginal communities and a self-management education strategy.
Like Aboriginal care, acute mental care health was also part of the 2010 plan.
Mental-health clients take up a lot of resources and over the past five years the hospital focused mainly on addictions.
The focus needs to evolve, McCready said.
“This is the whole spectrum of mental health. We do recognize we have to do a better job for our mental-health patients,” he said. “They need to feel welcome here. They need to feel part of this organization. That’s a cultural change for this organization.”
The plan also calls for the adoption of the Ontario Senior Friendly hospital framework and even more focus on its patient and family centred care philosophy.
