Turning evidence into action using a senior friendly hospital framework and a collaborative network.

The Senior Friendly Hospital Accelerating Change Together in Ontario program linked the Collaborative Network Model and the Senior Friendly Hospital Framework in a unique multi-hospital knowledge-to-practice initiative to improve care for hospitalized older adults. The design enabled teams from 78 Ontario hospitals to close a shared skills and knowledge gap while meeting the varied needs of their diverse contexts. Results suggest that this design meant to reduce unnecessary redundancy, while preserving requisite diversity, was successful in achieving its specific objectives: to build a collaborative network and increase the confidence, knowledge, and skills of its members sufficient to lead sustainable improvements in their unique hospital settings.

Using an Evidence-Informed Framework and a Self-Assessment Tool to Drive Priority Setting and Action toward Senior-Friendly Care.

Since 2011, Ontario hospitals have been engaged in the Senior Friendly Hospital (SFH) Strategy led by the Regional Geriatric Program (RGP) of Toronto, in partnership with Ontario's Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and the RGPs of Ontario. Using the SFH Framework as a foundation, improvement in Ontario hospitals has been driven by the identification of common priorities, sharing of resources and best practices, and the development of quality indicators. We document this progress through a second environmental scan of hospitals conducted in 2014 that highlights significant advancement in all five domains of the SFH Framework.