Wednesday, September 21, 2011
PRH Selected For Home First Process Improvement Program
PEMBROKE – The Pembroke Regional Hospital is extremely pleased to have been chosen as one of three hospitals in the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to develop an improvement process for the Home First program.
Designed to keep patients – specifically high needs seniors – safe in their homes with community supports, the underlying philosophy of the Home First program is to get frail seniors back on their feet and living as independently as possible so that they are not admitted prematurely to nursing homes.
As part of the program which is provincially funded and administered in our region by the Champlain Community Care Access Centre, elderly patients who are discharged from hospital are offered enhanced nursing or therapy in their own home as well as up to 360 hours of personal support services during the first two months after discharge. Each client is followed closely by a home-care case manager who adjusts the services as needed.
“Under Home First, the idea is to change the default position from one of the hospital being the place that seniors wait for alternate services, to one of the home, with appropriate and sometimes intensive supports, being the preferred and safer place from which seniors wait as they transition to other non-acute care settings,” said Hospital President and CEO Pierre Noel.
To achieve this, a patient’s in-hospital treatment plan from admission to discharge is focused on what needs to be done in order to get a patient well enough to go home, a huge part of that being a focus on mobility and independence.
“We recognize the benefits of being in a home environment when an acute care setting is no longer appropriate and we are very pleased to be able to help enhance this process in order to benefit those in our region,” Mr. Noel said.
As part of the Home First Performance Improvement Project (PIP), PRH, Queensway Carleton Hospital and Hawkesbury General Hospital will spend the next six months developing improvement processes which will then be made available to all hospitals in the Champlain region.
Working collaboratively with staff from the CCAC, Pembroke’s project team consists of Sandra Keon, Senior Leadership Team champion, Sabine Mersmann, management champion, Elaine Elliott, team lead, and Lisa Bradley project manager.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Carolyn Levesque, Public Affairs and Communications Coordinator
Pembroke Regional Hospital (613) 732-3675, ext. 6165 /
carolyn.levesque@pemreghos.org
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