Cambridge Memorial Hospital (CMH) is launching its five-year strategic plan with a new vision of "creating healthier communities, together."
For CMH president and CEO, Patrick Gaskin, the hospital has impacts, well beyond its walls.
That is why it consulted with over 1,400 residents to help staff reimagine the hospital to better reflect the community as a whole while "keeping people at the heart of all it does."
“It’s a different plan, with a different approach and mission,” Gaskin said.
If there is anything COVID-19 has helped us understand, he added, it's that health care is vitally important.
"A cornerstone of this plan to have a healthy, engaged, and active community hospital that can support the needs of the entire community.”
It's why the hospital reached out to the community and its partners to help shape the future of the organization.
“It’s about creating healthier communities together. These words resonated so well both internally and externally with our partners and with our community,” he said.
Over the next five years, the plan will be guided by a desire to advance health equity, elevate partnerships in care, reimagine community health, increase joy in the workplace, and sustain financial health.
The first pillar of the plan is about promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion to increase equitable access to healthcare, Gaskin explained. That includes supporting a work culture where every individual can reach their full potential.
“When we looked at the impact that COVID-19 had on equity deserving groups or on racialized or marginalized individuals, we saw the outcomes,” Gaskin said.
“We saw the devastation in long term care homes, and how it swept through a very vulnerable population. We saw challenges around higher incident rates of COVID-19 in marginalized groups, getting access to vaccines, and the challenges front-line workers faced. For us, it was important to highlight the importance of equity.”
At CMH this includes having an indigenous patient navigator embedded in the organization and working with the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre. They spend time each week connecting with Indigenous individuals within the hospital to make sure connections outside of the hospital are made.
CMH is also about to launch a new translation service.
"It’s very much like a Zoom call,” Gaskin said.
Previously, translation was done by phone, but now it’s a Zoom format, where doctors can see the patient. It includes American sign language among the various languages offered as a way to "amplify the voices of those who are sometimes not heard.”
For staff, physicians, midwives and volunteers, the strategic plan outlines the importance of having the resources and supports needed for everyone to reach their full potential.
The new plan also highlights the need to "elevate partnerships in care."
This means empowering patients, families, and care partners by providing them with the information, tools, and resources to be active partners in their care.
Over the next five years, Gaskin said CMH has a goal to reduce wait times, establishing community partnerships, and creating innovative opportunities to become a leading community hospital in the region.
Despite recent challenges caused by a long pandemic and staffing shortages, Gaskin says it’s important to acknowledge all the work that physicians, staff, and volunteers do everyday for the community.
“We are stronger because of them and their continued commitment as we are about to mark three years since the pandemic began. And it has been relentless. The level of exhaustion and fatigue, and with this fall surge and looking at what the impacts will be, we have to continue to support our staff at this difficult time,” Gaskin said.
Staff retention and recruitment has a renewed focus, he said, with work ongoing to fill about 130 vacancies.
“Pre-pandemic, we were at around 80 to 100 vacancies. So, we are not hugely off from pre-pandemic numbers, however, we added staff due to the increased number of beds because of COVID-19. So, we do have more staff than we did pre-pandemic, so now, we need more," Gaskin said.
CMH currently has over 1,440 staff, 250 physicians, 500 volunteers, and 190 beds.
The goal to make CMH a fun and rewarding place to work has been part of the hospital's strategic plan since 2018.
“For us, wellness and wellbeing for our staff is always top of mind. We have a number of wellness activities and we’ve increased the benefits associated with mental health services to better provide mental health supports for our staff,” Gaskin said.
We’ve also hired Canada's first facility dog who’s there to provide support for the heath and wellbeing of our staff. Ember makes rounds to all units. She’s trained to provide comfort and support.
“She’s super affectionate. So, it's about making that commitment, to offer those supports, because it is a stressful environment,” Gaskin said.
CMH now offers a wellness app to support staff at home.
"We’ve restarted staff events to say thanks. We also offer educational opportunities including a staff bursary fund and opportunities for staff to specialize in areas such as the operating room or in critical care. So, its about supporting them in advancing their careers as well,” Gaskin said.
“It’s not a quick fix. There aren’t just a ton of nurses out there just waiting for a job. We are going to have to make sure that we are an employer of choice, where people want to come and work."
The vision in the new strategic plan also includes innovation in 'reimagining' community health.
CMH says it will use innovation and embrace transformation to improve the way it delivers healthcare, to move away from the traditional model of healthcare in order to create a more connected and modern system of care.
That innovation mindset enables the hospital to tackle increasingly complex challenges and leverage data, analytics, and technology to improve healthcare delivery within the region, Gaskin said.
This also includes advancing projects that make a practical difference to the community and establish a stronger identity in research and innovation.
Those efforts saw CMH launch the Regional Liver Health Centre, last year.
The clinic provides patients with diagnosis, treatment, and management of advanced liver disease. This includes conditions such as advanced cirrhosis, acute hepatitis, and metabolic-associated fatty liver disease, among other liver disorders. Dietitian and RN consults will also be available to complement medical services.
“For liver health, it's about being able to offer wrap-around services so that patients are able to see the specialist, and have easy access to the services they need," Gaskin said, adding the hospital is looking at areas it can invest provincial funding to grow its services.
"We are now in the process of looking at all of our specialties, seeing where we can grow, and what the needs are in the community,” Gaskin said. “One of the areas we know we want to be offering is dialysis services."
Grand River Hospital is the current hub for regional kidney dialysis as is Guelph General Hospital, but CMH is exploring ways it can become a satellite centre.
"We could fill it with Cambridge residents who are having to travel three times a week to Grand River in order to receive dialysis," Gaskin said. "So, its about care, closer to home. And people can stay in their communities.
"We have a proposal before government right now, and hopefully we can have this open by 2025.”
Gaskin said there’s much more to come, and with more work ahead, it's an exciting time for the community.
“We’ve finished our Wing A renovation, and Wing B will be done in less than two years. At the end of it, we will essentially have a brand new hospital. We appreciate how the community has lived through the renovation. Everyday you walk throughout the hospital, and there’s a new corridor or another that is blocked,” he said.
“But right now, it is an exciting journey ahead for the organization, and it is all done in partnership with the community.”
