Local Hospitals Reflect On Previous Year Successes

Monday, 22 July 2019 08:57

Photo Credit: Alexandra Hospital Ingersoll and the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital.

Some significant milestones were achieved this past year from Ingersoll's Alexandra Hospital and the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital.

OXFORD COUNTY - The Alexandra Hospital in Ingersoll and the Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital's recent annual general meetings highlighted some significant milestones over the past year.

The Hospitalist Model and Quality Strategy were among the achievements recognized.

President and CEO Sandy Jansen says the organizations had a tremendous year.

"We've been focused on ensuring that our patient advisors and family advisors have a voice in our hospitals and so we've been actively recruiting for patient and family advisors. But you know one of the neatest things I think we've done is we've relaxed our visitor policy and so now we actually have a family presence policy, rather than visitor restrictions. And so we know in health care that patients actually do far better if a family member or friend is with them during their stay in the hospital and they just have that support and that emotional support while they're in the hospital, so we've relaxed those visiting hour significantly."

The Hospitalist Model was a new approach of care for inpatients at both facilities, which supported discharge planning and provided relief for over-crowding issues. Their Quality Strategy was created last year and it will be implemented over a two-year period.

She says this will only help the facilities moving forward.

"By improving our patient and family experience, by enhancing our staff experience while they're working here and physician experience, it really helps to ensure that we're on a solid footing as we go forward into this massive transformational change in healthcare. And that's what we really need to do is to think about acute care. Our hospital in Ingersoll and our hospital in Tillsonburg, they're here to stay and they provide a critical role in the community and caring for people in our community."

Their AGM's saw them celebrate multiple achievements, along with beginning a number of strategies to engage and support their employees throughout the year. This included increasing recognition and service award events, staff satisfaction surveys, an enhanced Employee and Family Assistance Program and additional front-line services in a number of clinical areas.

Jansen says the hospitals also worked together with community service and health care providers to submit a self-assessment towards forming an Ontario Health Team.