THUNDER BAY -- Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is one of 18 hospitals across the country and around the world invited to join the Acute Care for Elders Collaborative.
The initiative, which will provide $40,000 to run the program through March 2017, was devised to support elder-friendly care, says Stewart Kennedy, the hospital’s executive vice-president of academic affairs.
“This is wonderful news for senior patients and their families,” Kennedy said in a release issued on Wednesday morning.
“As identified in our Strategic Plan 2020, we are focused on enhancing care for an aging population. The ACE Collaborative provides coaching, educational materials and tools to support that. It’s about delivering care based on evidence and best practice for seniors.”
According to Stewart, while just 16 per cent of the population are seniors 65 and older, they represent 42 per cent of acute-care hospitalizations and 58 per cent of all hospital stays across the Caanda.
The goal of the program is to institute care designed specifically for seniors, the ultimate goal to improve outcomes and reduce lengths of stay, admissions, readmissions and inappropriate use of hospital resources.
“Our team will have access to expert coaches, including Dr. Samir Sinha and his team, who have led the ACE strategy at Mount Sinai Hospital,” Kennedy said.
Recently hired hospital president and CEO Jean Bartkowiak said the invite to join the ACE Collaborative is significant.
He added they owed it to patients and staff to seek out programs that have proven to work.
“The Acute Care for Elders Collaborative works, and will support our team with implementation, evaluation and spread of proven evidence-friendly care practices,” Bartkowiak said in the release. “While it is our health-care practitioners who will receive the best practice education, it is our senior patients who will benefit the most.”
The program is a partnership between the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement and the Technology Evaluation in the Elderly Network.
-- Information provided by Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre
