Bringing Care Closer to Home: Focus of the FLA OHT Partnership Town Hall

July 8, 2024.

On June 27, 2024, FLA OHT partners, health-care providers and leaders, and community members joined us for our first-ever in-person FLA OHT Partnership Town Hall, our seventh overall, which focused on working together to bring care close to home. It was wonderful to connect and discuss our shared commitment of developing a team-based health-care system that prioritizes mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and social health and wellness to meet the FLA community’s needs. The event featured important updates, inspiring stories, and forward-thinking strategies that highlight our collective efforts to enhance health care in our community.

Keynote highlights from Dr. Jane Philpott
Dr. Jane Philpott, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Director of the School of Medicine at Queen’s University and author of Health for All, opened the Town Hall sharing key insights on the concepts of Health Homes and the conversations she’s been having about them across the country, as well as examples of how we are bringing Health Homes to life here in our FLA community. Jane also discussed the potential of Health Homes to serve as holistic community hubs, offering support beyond clinical care.

Navigating a complex health-care system from a person-centred perspective
We also heard from Community Council co-chair Dorothyanne Brown, who shared her experience navigating the health-care system with multiple chronic illnesses without a primary care provider. She highlighted the challenges of finding access points for care and the lack of coordination between different health-care providers, emphasizing the potential risks of a disjointed system. She spoke to many of the issues that we’re working to address at the FLA OHT as we work together to redesign the health-care system to prioritize accessible, holistic, coordinated care.

Accessing care close to home
FLA OHT Executive Lead Dr. Kim Morrison discussed the concept of accessing care close to home, drawing parallels to the schoolboard approach where primary care is based on geographic location. She also highlighted the FLA OHT’s mission to ensure every resident in Frontenac, Lennox and Addington counties is connected to a primary care provider in a team-based Health Home. This approach aims to create a connected, accessible, and people-centred health-care system, ensuring that everyone receives comprehensive and continuous care.

Health Home successes: attaching people to care
We also received exciting updates on three Health Homes in the region:

• Midtown Kingston Health Home, formerly referred to as ‘Periwinkle,’ which is expected to provide access to team-based care for more than 8000 people once operational;
• Greater Napanee Health Home, which will attach every resident of Napanee, ensuring comprehensive, connected care for the entire community; and
• CDK Kingston Health Home, a new Health Home that offers a connected, team-based approach to care, featuring a physiotherapist, psychotherapist, social worker, mental health worker and dietician, with plans to add more health-care providers to ensure comprehensive support for all patients.

Progress on CDK Kingston Health Home
Dr. Morrison presented additional information on the invaluable contributions of the CDK Kingston Health Home to the FLA community. Under the co-leadership of Dr. Ziny Yen and her team, CDK is operating three clinics that collectively serve the community: the Princess Street walk-in clinic, the Sutherland clinic, and CDK Kingston Health Home. Since May 2024, CDK has successfully connected 3,400 people to primary care, providing essential health services and support to our community.

Commitment to providing trauma-informed care
The Town Hall also included a discussion on the FLA OHT’s commitment to trauma-informed care, a holistic, person-centred model of care that emphasizes understanding where people come from and meeting them where they’re at. Information was shared about the preliminary steps that have been taken to start implementing trauma-informed care, including partnerships with Kingston Community Health Centres (KCHC) Pathways to Education and Teach Resilience, and the successful primary care training day where 90% of participants felt it enhanced their knowledge and relevance of trauma-informed care to their practices. Learn more about our commitment to trauma-informed care.

Thank you to all of the FLA OHT partners and community members for participating in the Town Hall for your steadfast collaboration and engagement in redesigning our health-care system to better meet the diverse needs of our community.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to work together to bring care closer to home.