CO-DESIGNING OUR CULTURE
BURLINGTON ONTARIO HEALTH TEAM
In April 2019, the Ontario government passed The People’s Health
Care Act. From the Act, came the introduction of Ontario Health
Teams. Burlington has a long history of collaboration across
health care organizations, including primary care, hospital care,
long-term care, community health services, and social service
groups. 12 health and social service organizations submitted an
application and in December 2019, Burlington was selected as
one of the first 24 Ontario Health Teams. Since that time, they
have been designing a patient-centred, connected, coordinated
care system with the community.
This year, JBH began purposefully co-designing our
culture and behaviours. Together, staff, leadership,
patients and the community contributed to the
building of a roadmap that will help JBH create and
sustain a healthy, caring and positive workplace
culture. Feedback was gathered from staff, patients
and the community to be incorporated into a future
vision for JBH culture. Our culture of caring will
inspire and empower every staff member to consider
how we interact, lead, collaborate, communicate
with our patients, our community and each other.
The strengths of our culture were highlighted during
the COVID-19 pandemic, as our staff demonstrated
teamwork, partnership, compassion and a sense of
community.
TOP EMPLOYER 2020
Joseph Brant Hospital was selected as one of Hamilton-Niagara’s Top Employers
for 2020, the fifth consecutive year that JBH has received this prestigious award.
This award reflects our commitment to creating an exceptional workplace for our
staff, physicians, learners and volunteers.
EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT REDUCTION IN WAIT TIMES
Over the past year, significant effort
was focused on delivering more timely
and well-coordinated care for patients
admitted through our Emergency
Department (ED). This work began in
early in the year with changes to how
we use our ED space and changes
to our ED Physician care model. In
April 2019, a new model of care was
implemented for Internal Medicine
Physicians to improve coordination and
continuity of care.
To build upon these changes, an
“Acute Patient Care Optimization
Kaizen” event was held over six days
in late May and early June 2019. Over
35 participants, including physicians,
staff, supervisors, managers and
senior leaders participated in an event
to build processes that provide a
timely, well-coordinated start to each
admitted Medicine patient’s treatment
journey. Ten changes were identified,
developed, tested and implemented
to optimize care for newly admitted
patients.
Even with increased ED patient visits,
and increased need for inpatient beds
this year, significant improvements
have been achieved and sustained.
While JBH had already been
recognized in 2018-2019 for achieving
significant improvement in our ED Payfor-Results
(P4R) performance ranking,
the Ontario government program
to help hospitals meet specific ED
wait time reduction targets, the
performance gains following this year’s
efforts were even more impressive.
Joseph Brant Hospital was recognized
as the Most Improved Medium-
Volume Community Hospital by
the Provincial Government, with a
reduction of 44.0% in 90th Percentile
ED Length of Stay, from Fiscal Year
2018-2019 to Fiscal Year 2019-2020.
In March 2020, JBH was ranked 9th
among all 74 Ontario hospitals in ED
P4R performance - a top performer
among Ontario medium-size hospitals,
and first among all hospitals within
the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-
Brant LHIN. Since its implementation,
JBH has received an increase in the
compliments regarding the ED patient
experience.
Annual Report 2019–2020 5