At our public Town Hall meeting on November 16, 2010, held at the Birchmount campus, we conducted our first-ever "live tweet" of the proceedings. By using Twitter to share the highlights of our speakers’ presentations, we were able to increase access for our community and provide additional opportunities to participate. A transcript of the tweets from the evening are available below.

Follow us on Twitter for regular hospital updates and valuable health and wellness news! 

 

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Welcome to our first-ever Town Hall to be live-tweeted at The Scarborough Hospital!  

 

We hope you’ll follow this stream using the #tshtownhall hashtag. Kindly post any questions you may have of our speakers.

 

Our keynote topic is Cancer Care in Scarborough, presented by Vince Pileggi, Regional Director, Scarb Joint Systemic Program.  

 

Vince will focus on TSH’s role in building an integrated model of cancer care in our community.  

 

But our first speaker is Stephen Smith, Vice Chair of our Board of Directors.  

 

New Mission, Vision & Values challenges TSH to provide outstanding care experience.  

 

Smith: “This is a call to put patients at the centre of everything that happens at TSH.”  

 

TSH recently conducted 3,000 interviews with patients to define ideal patient experience.  

 

Patient issues are often with hospital’s communications & dialogue with patient/family.  

 

Our commitment is to ensure the patient’s voice is always at the table.  

 

Our next speaker is John Dakin, who is sharing his experience as a recent patient of Dr. Rathbun at TSH.  

 

Dakin is 61, and a sail maker by trade, which includes racing boats all over the world. He recently had knee surgery at TSH.  

 

Dakin says the anesthetist and OR nurses were very professional and helpful.  

 

Nurses were never in a hurry, and took time to ensure Dakin was comfortable.  

 

Dakin: "The extra care was a sma ll thing, but it meant a lot."  

 

Read more about John Dakin and his experiences with Dr. Rathbun and TSH at http://bit.ly/bUuQF9.  

 

Stephen Smith points out that TSH has one of the finest surgical teams in the province.  

 

We also have some of the oldest operating rooms in the province, but are hoping for gov’t approval to upgrade soon.  

 

We are also awaiting to hear status of application for an MRI for our Birchmount campus.  

 

LEAN methodology is helping TSH meet ED wait time targets. Good progress being made so far.  

 

Still focusing on meeting 8hr target for patients requiring admission, though we’ve seen improvements.  

 

Challenge is often matching appropriate bed to the appropriate patient. Isolation patients, for example.  

 

Board and mgmt are committed to constantly improving wait time metrics.  

 

Chief of Staff, Dr. Steven Jackson, is now providing an update on the Clinical Action Planning (CAP) Process.  

 

CAP is different from earlier planning processes because it was patient focused & broke down traditional silos.  

 

Communities of Practice were created including Cancer, Chronic Disease Mgmt, Mental Health, Men’s Health, Women’s Health…  

 

…Acute Adult Inpatient, Children’s Health, Musculoskeletal, Elective Surg, Renal, and Acute Ambulatory Care.  

 

Communities of Practice focused on common patient experiences/issues.  

 

Proposals from each CoP were evaluated by stakeholders, including community members, at a Consensus Summit Oct. 26.  

 

CAP Steering Committee reviewed those evaluations, and decided which merited moving forward to business case stage.  

 

Proposals not going to business case may still become reality, but not necessarily a strategic focus.  

 

More details about the process, and the proposals moving forward, can be found at http://bit.ly/b0IQA4  

 

Question from floor: Why aren’t wait times part of the CAP process?  

 

Answer: Other processes, such as process improvement plans, are addressing those issues and so were not part of CAP process.  

 

Question from floor: The proposals going forward are very ambitious. What are the timelines?  

 

Answer: Most will be 3-5 year plans, though some may extend beyond. We will be prioritizing as we move forward.  

 

Question: How can community continue to provide input?

 

Community Advisory Council always welcomes community input. Details at http://bit.ly/b09vuf  

 

This brings us to our keynote speaker, Vince Pileggi, talking about building a comprehensive cancer program in Scarborough.  

Central East Regional Cancer Program (CE RCP) has devel’d a region-wide prevention program.  

 

CE RCP Screening prog includes Ont. Breast Screening, ColonCancerCheck, Familial Oncology and soon Cervical Screening.  

 

Treatments at Scarborough hospitals include cancer surgery, systemic therapy and radiation assessment.  

 

Breast screening rate in Scarborough among lowest in province. 38% of FOBT tests never followed up by patients.  

 

Projected new cases for chemo jumps to 1,224. 40% of patients get surgery outside Scarborough.  

 

How can we address challenges? By ensuring we are providing best quality diagnostic, treatment for Scarborough residents.  

 

Diagnostic Assessment Units streamline process from suspicion of cancer to treatment. Goal for breast cancer is 4 wks.  

 

It’s all about coordinating cancer care for patients.  

 

Supportive care builds on improving access to social wkrs, dietitians, physio & psychologists.  

 

Focus on improvements to existing palliative care program, both inpt and outpt.  

 

Comprehensive cancer program will be a 3-6 year timeline, involving TSH and Rouge Valley Centenary hosp.  

 

Q: What is the status of bringing in new patient gowns?  

 

A: We are working with a Muslim community group to bring in new, more modest gowns for selected units.  

 

Q: How can TSH facilitate communication between non-English pts and physicians?  

 

A: We have hired 2 FT interpreters, speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and Tamil, our most commonly spoken non-English languages.  

 

We also have language phone lines that offer medical translation in a number of languages as needed.  

 

That wraps up our Town Hall tonite. Thank you to everyone who followed our live-tweet. Happy to answer further q’s anytime.