As overfilled hospitals everywhere are struggling to cope with a busy winter of respiratory disease and influenza, many in healthcare are calling for a more “upstream” approach to preventing Emergency Department visits and hospital admissions. But intervening upstream is more difficult than it sounds. Today’s guests have done just this. Talking us through their award-winning, quality improvement work in reducing ED visits and hospital admissions for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease are Donna Jouantapp, Lina Alsakran and Dr. Zoe Pullan from Cowichan on Vancouver Island. In this interview, we learn how a well-designed project with a dedicated, inclusive and nimble team can overcome obstacles on the path to sustainable, cost effective and patient-centered care. 

Links: 
The INSPIRED COPD Outreach Program and COPD Care and Education Nova Scotia

Listeners will be familiar with the physician-led healthcare quality improvement work featured on this podcast, but they may not be familiar with how this work is formally supported at the Provincial level. In this episode, we interview Cindy Myles, the Vice President of the Specialist Services Committee, who gives us a primer on British Columbia’s unique, Joint Collaborative Committees and the importance of multipartite collaboration when addressing healthcare’s “wicked” problems. We hear how collaboration generates more sustainable change and how, during this challenging time for healthcare delivery, working together to improve the system can bring us hope for healthcare’s future.

Links:
SSC News
The Exchange, a database of quality improvement projects supported by SSC and the Shared Care Committee 
JCC Website

In our current technological age, the most successful information platforms are those that provide exactly the information the user needs quickly and accurately. This is the underlying premise behind British Columbia’s hugely successful medical information platform Pathways. In today’s episode we interview its two eminent founders Dr. Kathleen Ross and Dr. Tracy Monk, about its early origin story and how it developed into the universal healthcare provider directory and an amazing, multifunctional, timesaving and educational resource in its current form. We hear how their strong guiding principles drove development of Pathways’ form and function, how listening to users led to some of its best features and how quality improvement through innovation is not only rewarding but also fun.

Pathways Links:

To register go to www.pathwaysbc.ca and select "request access" at lower right

Info page
https://pathwaysbc.ca/info

Backgrounder 
https://pathwaysbc.ca/ci/8684

In this gem of an interview, we chat with Christina Krause, the CEO of Health Quality BC about a whole range of topics around patient safety from the role of Provincial quality and safety organizations and the new BC Patient Safety Strategy to what’s changed in our understanding of safer patient care. Through personal stories and experiences, Christina shares valuable insights into safer care through listening to patients’ and families, the importance of psychological safety, and why everyone should just take just a little more time to understand one another’s viewpoints. Listen and let Christina’s infectious enthusiasm bring you to a new understanding of safer patient care.

Links: 
HQBC Patient Safety Strategy
HQBC “What matters to you?”

In this episode we feature another award-winning, quality improvement project this time based in Victoria, Vancouver Island. Our guests are Alanna Summers, Program Manager and a registered psychiatric nurse, Jennifer Sandburg, Team Lead occupational therapist, and Jane Dolan, MHSU Clinical recreational therapist, from the South Island Mental Health and Substance Use team. Starting with the gap in care they first identified, they take us through how they developed their cost effective and successful Bridging Care program for patients in mental health crisis. This program not only provides effective, patient-centered care but has also reduced hospital admissions and inpatient length of stay. We hear how local healthcare leadership had the foresight to support the original vision, powerful testimonials from some of the program’s patients, and how developing the program itself brought positive benefits to the provider team.

Links:
Counselling, Treatment & Recovery | Island Health
News
Adults experiencing mental health challenges benefit from Island Health’s Bridging Care Program | Island Health