In its efforts to improve health outcomes, advance equity, and strengthen regional partnerships, the Chatham-Kent Ontario Health Team (CKOHT) has launched a new multi-year strategic plan.
The CKOHT recently revealed the strategic plan, which provides a roadmap of how the collaborative group of 26 local health care providers will be working together over the next five years to improve health care for local residents.
More than 200 health care partners and 600 community members contributed to a broad engagement process that helped to shape the vision and goals of the strategic plan.
Melissa Sharpe-Harrigan, CKOHT’s executive transformation lead, said the CKOHT will be working toward strengthening the primary care system, cultivating a high-performing and accountable health team, and ensuring health equity and inclusion are embedded in local care.
She said this includes building a comprehensive system where transitions between care practitioners are smoother and outcomes are better.
“We will enhance system navigation, and that will make sure nobody has a wrong door when they are coming into the health care system,” said Sharpe-Harrigan. “It shouldn’t matter if you are seeing somebody at the hospital or working through social services, our partners across the OHT should be able to navigate patients and their caregivers and family members to the right service.”
Sharpe-Harrigan said the team will use a “population health-based approach” for its planning process, which will look at data and information that is very specific to Chatham-Kent. To best understand the data, the health team will be working with stakeholders across a variety of sectors.
She used the BridgeCare, a weekend walk-in primary care clinic for those without a family doctor, as an example of “co-designing care.”
“When we co-designed how that clinic would function, we brought together patients, physicians, partners within organizations, and we mapped out what it was we were looking to achieve and how we could build that,” said Sharpe-Harrigan.
The full CKOHT strategic plan report can be found by clicking here.
