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Enhancing Integrated Care

Enhancing Integrated Care helps primary and community care delivery organizations strengthen integrated team-based care models, including virtual care, making access easier and easing pressure on emergency departments.

Illustration featuring three healthcare providers with speech bubbles beside their heads: one with a medical cross, one with a computer monitor and one with a house.
Topics
  • Health equity
  • Long-term care
  • Patient safety
Audience

  • Healthcare leader

  • Community organization

  • Point of care provider

Around one in five emergency department visits happen because of limited access to primary care. Enhancing Integrated Care brings teams together to share knowledge and implement integrated care approaches that help bolster social and healthcare systems, with a goal of reducing avoidable emergency department visits.

How teams are supported

Both cohort 1 and cohort 2 are supported by:

  • Seed funding up to $10,000.

  • Expert coaches to help you address challenges, sustain improvements and plan for long-term success.

  • Proven tools and evidence-informed resources for implementing and measuring what works.

  • Virtual learning and networking to share knowledge, celebrate successes and drive collective progress.

  • Research support from CIHR-funded researchers for teams in the primary care sector. 

Participating teams will be supported to pursue their goals while building essential skills in equity, cultural safety, patient engagement and safety. They’ll also explore key topics like quality improvement and working in partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.

What is integrated care?

Integrated care is a collaborative approach where healthcare professionals from various disciplines—such as primary care providers, specialists, allied health professionals, mental health professionals, pharmacists and community and social workers—work together to provide coordinated, patient-centred care. This ensures patients receive the right care at the right time. The goal is to improve health outcomes, reduce service duplication, and lower costs by offering more efficient, coordinated care.

Meet the teams

Enhancing Integrated Care supports 87 teams from 9 provinces and territories. There are two distinct cohorts, each at a different stage of their improvement journey.

Here’s a look at what some teams intend to achieve:

  • Equity in access to care: A British Columbia team is hoping to broaden access of a proven virtual physician service for underserved populations such as rural, First Nations, Inuit and Metis and non-English speaking communities.

  • Smoother transitions from hospital to home: A hospital in the Greater Toronto Area is coordinating services across hospital, primary care, homecare and community supports.

  • Optimizing post-operative support: A nurse-practitioner led clinic in Nova Scotia is implementing a tech-enabled, rapid follow-up clinic (virtual and in-person), improving continuity and safety.

Examples of integrated care

Enhanced Integrated Care builds on the success of other HEC programs. These past projects are examples of the type of work that HEC has supported in integrated care:

“I'm excited for the support from HEC, we've been working on this project for two years with hurdles along the way. I’m also looking forward to the coaching and learning opportunities from others across the country.”

Danielle KentDirector of Research, Loch Lomond Villa. (Enhancing Integrated Care Initiative: Establishing a multi-specialty interprofessional team memory clinic in the Greater Saint John region in New Brunswick)

Featured content

Enhancing Integrated Care: What’s Possible When Care Works Together

The Enhancing Integrated Care program builds on the success of previous HEC initiatives helping organizations to design and deliver integrated care.

Read more
Illustration of three healthcare providers sitting at a table with bubbles containing a medical cross, outline of a head with a heart at the top and a house below them signifying integrated team-based care.

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