Two couples walking in the park.

Introducing CorHealth Ontario’s Patient & Family Engagement Strategy

CorHealth Ontario’s (CorHealth) inaugural 2017-22 Strategic Plan made a commitment to ensuring that patients and families would be partners and key advisors in helping shape cardiac, stroke and vascular care services in Ontario. As patients and families have been involved in several CorHealth initiatives to date, CorHealth is excited to introduce a more formal Patient & Family Engagement Strategy for the organization.

Process chart depicting steps of strategy.

Patient and Family Designed

Through collaborative consultations with patients, families and healthcare experts, CorHealth has developed a Strategy which provides insightful recommendations and tactics to actively engage patients and families in the work we do.

The development of the CorHealth Patient & Family Engagement Strategy was patient led. The first Patient & Family Engagement Strategy workshop was held on September 20, 2018, chaired by Mr. Michael McCormick from the Ontario Renal Network. 5 patient and family advisors came together with CorHealth for the purpose of creating a Strategy that first and foremost, reflects the ideas of patients and families, their advice and any additional considerations they may have for successful future implementation.

Key findings, such as incorporating a variety of approaches for engagement and early patient engagement in the work we do, drove the development CorHealth’s recommendations and plan for strategy implementation.

Our Strategy

As a result of our consultations and the direction provided by patients, families and healthcare experts, the following five recommendations will provide the path forward when engaging patients and families as partners and key advisors, helping CorHealth shape cardiac, stroke and vascular care services in Ontario:

  1. Develop a diverse pool of Patient and Family Advisors for CorHealth with previous Patient and Family Advisor experience
  2. Ensure Patient and Family Advisors are included on task groups and they are engaged early in the project lifecycle
  3. Evaluate engagement opportunities for Patient and Family Advisors on current/active CorHealth task groups
  4. Empower patients and families to effectively engage with CorHealth
  5. Provide CorHealth staff and stakeholders with training and tools to support effective patient and family engagement

With the shared advice and guidance from our executive team, Leadership Councils and Clinical Advisory Committee, CorHealth Ontario’s board of directors approved the Patient & Family Engagement Strategy during the board meeting that took place on February 27, 2019. CorHealth along with patient and family advisors, are looking forward to rolling out the Patient and Family Engagement Strategy.

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