Brightshores Health System has created a new strategic five-year plan for Grey Bruce called Stronger, Together – A Shared Vision for the Future.
The plan had thousands of insights from patients, families, staff, physicians, volunteers, partners, donors and community members.
“When we began this journey last fall, our goal was to be Stronger. Together. The response was remarkable,” says new chair of the Brightshores Board of Directors Steven Green. “This input helped define a clear path forward for the future of healthcare in our region.”
Over the next five years, the focus will be on creating a workplace where everyone feels welcome, works well together and contributes to strong results; modernizing how care is delivered by reducing barriers and building better ways of working; improving care transitions across sites and teams; and strengthening partnerships to make patient and family experiences smoother, more connected and more coordinated.
Brightshores has also refreshed its vision and values based on thoughtful feedback. These updates will guide how staff, physicians and volunteers work, care and connect across Brightshores and beyond.
President and CEO of Brightshores Ann Ford says, “Part of the feedback was, ‘engage us more.’ Ask us what we think, let us help in different initiatives,” says Ford adding, “We really got the feel that everybody really wants to do the right thing, but they also want to be included in the decisions.”
Ford says each department has a ‘huddle board’ that enables staff and managers to communicate. “This is really going to be forum for them to ask their managers questions and for us, from a leadership perspective to ask questions of the staff.” There will also be a leadership forum made up of managers and directors to discuss ideas.
She says they have regular meetings with physicians. “One example is that we currently have some physicians who are joining our capital decision making, so any time we go to buy a piece of equipment or what our capital list is, we have our physicians at the table giving us their opinions on what they thing we should be doing on a capital perspective,” says Ford.
She says the other piece of that is looking at how to work together as a system among Brightshores six hospitals and the Wellness and Recovery Centre. Ford says they’re looking at how to make transitions between sites smoother and improve care transitions.
She explains, they’re working on ensuring when a patient gets moved or discharged, that the ball doesn’t get dropped, and the patient knows what their next step is. “We’re working on that to make it smoother, more coordination amongst all the parties. Strengthening partnerships with some of our community. We work very closely with a number of community organizations: hospice, palliative care, home care, lots of folks so we want to make those connections stronger also,” says Ford.
There is also a plan to modernize patient health records. “This will be an organization-wide infrastructure upgrade to our IT system for patient records.” She explains, “It’s going to give us a lot more opportunity to share information with our patients.” Ford says they’ll move away from paper charts to computerized charts. “That’s a big modernization for us, we need to do it. We’ve been talking about it for a number of years, and over the next 18 months we’re going to implement and upgrade the system.”
She says modernization also involves examining different models of care “For instance, we’re looking at internal medicine that we actually may start providing some new clinics that are not necessarily based just in Owen Sound, but across our other sites. We’re looking at procedural care (eg. surgery or endoscopies) and where do we provide it. We know we can’t provide it necessarily at all six hospital sites, but maybe we concentrate on a few,” adding that would be done with the view of sustaining all sites.
“One message stood out throughout the engagement: Brightshores is known for its heart – for being compassionate, committed and deeply connected to the communities we serve,” says Ford. “People believe in Brightshores and want to be part of its ongoing journey. Together, we’re moving forward with purpose to build a future where care is stronger, experiences are better and every person feels the difference Brightshores makes.”