SARNIA & PETROLIA – July 23, 2020 – As a member of the Sarnia-Lambton Ontario Health Team, Bluewater Health is pleased to mark the next step in our community’s journey to become an Ontario Health Team (OHT). On December 3, 2019, 35 local health partners submitted a Self-Assessment to the Government of Ontario for consideration. Today, our local collaborative was formally invited to move forward with the next step in becoming an Ontario Health Team. Ontario Health teams are cross-sector healthcare partners who work together to remove silos and deliver more integrated healthcare across the community.
The Sarnia-Lambton Ontario Health Team (SL-OHT) comprises more than 35 health and social service organizations serving Sarnia-Lambton and surrounding communities. Patients, families and caregivers with lived experience are actively engaged in the creation of the Sarnia-Lambton Ontario Health Team.
“We worked very hard as a community to innovate and imagine a new way of working together,” commented Mike Lapaine, President & CEO, Bluewater Health and the SL-OHT application steering committee chair “Locally we had a huge amount of input from every corner of the healthcare sector in preparing for today’s announcement. And, in fact, that teamwork and relationship building really set us up well for the pandemic. This experience has actually strengthened our future ability to operate as an OHT.”
Examples include:
- Bluewater Health and Vision Nursing Home collaborated to eradicate Vision’s outbreak
- Home and Community Care and community partners supported hospital operations in a unique and unprecedented way with the urgent and immediate ramp down of operations in March
- Unprecedented communication and coordination among local primary care practitioners, the hospital and Lambton Public Health
- Multiple assessment clinics were set up quickly due to pre-COVID relationships. This nimbleness and systems-thinking created an urban, rural and two Indigenous testing centres.
The Ontario government’s announcement will enable the Sarnia Lambton Ontario Health Team to move forward to continue to explore ways to offer better, more integrated care.