Local residents can rest assured their cardiac concerns are in good hands.
The Huron Perth and Area Ontario Health Team (HPA-OHT)’s heart failure program has been named one of three finalists in the Improved Population Health category of the 2024 Ontario Health System Quality and Innovation Awards.
Although the program did not win the award when the ceremony was held in Toronto in September, to be recognized above other, bigger programs is a feather in the team’s cap, according to Dr. Shanil Narayan.
“Whenever you hear you're one of the best in the province, I think that's reassuring,” Narayan, a Stratford-based physician, said.
Narayan is the physician lead for the heart-failure program. He has been a physician in the Huron-Perth area for about 20 years now, helping people with cardiac-function issues for that time. His leadership role has developed over the last three to four years.
The Ontario Health System Quality and Innovation Awards celebrate the work being done across the province to address evolving health-care challenges. The Improved Population Health category, which the local heart-failure program was recognized by, honours initiatives that demonstrate measurable success in improving health outcomes for specific communities.
“We've been increasingly hearing good things about what our region has been doing over the last little while,” Narayan said. “We, as of a few years ago, were one of the first few people to be recognized as an outstanding group in heart-function care, so there were pilot projects launched in our area to try and figure out how to better work on cardiac rehabilitation. We were one of a few regions that received extra funding from the ministry to develop networks to look after heart-function care in the last few years.”
Narayan called this award “the cherry on top” of what the team has been hearing from the community and from the wider health-care network. He said the award is something people can look to, but it is representative of the consistent hard work and outstanding care the team puts out.
“I'm super proud of our region to be high,” Narayan said. “I always tell people that Huron-Perth and area punches above its weight class consistently. And I think one of the things that small communities do better than most is establish and leverage relationships.
“You hear stories about family medicine burnout, and it's true, but there are still people fighting hard every day to do good things. We talk about primary care alternatives and we know that there are some excellent nurse practitioners who work with us. We talk about people who are again struggling because of workload, but consistently when we get to these groups, we have young, enthusiastic people working in our emergency EMS pathways who put their hands up time and time again and say, ‘Hey, can we help?’ We have nurses working in long-term care facilities who consistently say, ‘Hey, what can we do to help this be better?’ … Those day-to-day relationships are consistent stories.”
Narayan said the silent heroes who work and do great things every day are key to the team’s success, as is the population they serve. Having an appreciative patient population that “works wonders” to give feedback that fuels their caregivers is something Narayan highlighted.
He specifically praised the team’s respiratory therapists and nurse practitioners with cardiac training who have been particularly helpful in sharing their skills and knowledge with patients, building the team’s capacity.
Since 2019, regions of care have been divided into Ontario health teams: regional coalitions of organizations that come together to deliver care and coordinate resources for the population. Within the team, there are physicians, nurses, community support specialists and people from across the breadth of health care.
The team has not formally celebrated yet, having members across the region’s area and members that work in various capacities, but Narayan said there will be a celebration soon.
"We are proud to be recognized for our collaborative and integrated approach," said Joelle Lamport Lewis, director of HPA-OHT, in a media release. "This acknowledgment reflects the hard work and commitment of our health-care professionals and partner organizations who come together to provide the best possible care for our communities."
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