Letter from the CEO –
Thank You and Happy Holidays
As 2020 comes to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your tireless dedication to advancing cardiac, stroke, and vascular care in Ontario – especially during such a difficult year. Despite the extraordinary challenges COVID-19 presented, your incredibly strong commitment to help us strive for the best care for Ontarians continued to be exceptional. Thank you.
We appreciate your participation and engagement in our COVID-19 Stakeholder Forums. Through these meetings, clinicians, administrators, community care centres, organizations, and our colleagues at the Ministry of Health quickly came together to support the development of health care tools and processes to navigate the pandemic. A true example of working together in a crisis. CorHealth will be continuing to host these Forums in 2021 at a frequency that makes sense for the field.
While continuing to provide support during COVID-19, CorHealth also held Cardiac, Stroke, and Vascular Leadership Council meetings in late fall to discuss ongoing non-COVID-19 related work in these areas that has continued. You will have seen updates on much of this work in previous editions of the CorHealth Quarterly. Some more recent highlights are included in this newsletter:
- Our stroke team has worked hard to get the Los Angeles Motor Scale (LAMS) included as a pre-hospital secondary screen in the Acute Stroke Bypass Protocol used by paramedics across Ontario
- CorHealth’s second annual Consolidated Cardiac Outcomes Reports was released in November and we wish all the best to Garth Oakes
- The Lower Limb Preservation Strategy Advisory Committee continues to develop a provincial framework, including a Pathway for Preventing and Managing Vascular Wounds
- CorHealth is working with the Ministry of Health to investigate the potential inclusion of activity beyond inpatient procedures within the vascular QBP funding envelope
Also this Fall, CorHealth was informed that the Ministry of Health (MOH) is assessing the possible transfer of CorHealth Ontario into Ontario Health (OH) sometime in 2021, similar to Cancer Care Ontario having been transferred in 2019. Matt Anderson, President & CEO of Ontario Health, and I will be co-leading the transition process; and, we have created an internal planning transition team who will be working closely with OH and MOH throughout the process. We will keep you apprised of updates as they become available.
We look forward to continuing this important cardiac, stroke, and vascular work with you in the new year.
In the meantime, on behalf of our Board of Directors, and out team at CorHealth, we wish you all the best for 2021!
