There was an unprecedented surge in admissions for medical stabilization of pediatric patients with eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario. Eleven hospitals established an integrated rapid response model to ensure timely in-patient access for these patients. This population was cared for in re-allocated community hospital beds as a result of engaging hospital leadership, strengthening partnerships, consulting experts, leveraging existing resources and developing regional bed access strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Care plans summarize a child with medical complexity's (CMC) medical history and ongoing care needs. Often, the health care team controls the care plan content, limiting caregivers' ability to edit the document in real time and potentially compromising accuracy and utility. With this study, we aimed to provide caregivers of CMC with online access and shared editing control of their child's care plan and to explore the experiences of caregivers and care team members (CTMs) after using an online collaborative care plan (OCCP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Children with medical complexity (CMC) are individuals with complex chronic conditions who have substantial health care needs, functional limitations, and significant use of health care. By nature of their health status, they have many care providers across multiple settings, making information sharing critical to their health and safety. Connecting2gether (C2), a web- and mobile-based patient-facing platform, was codeveloped with families to support and empower parental caregivers, improve information sharing, and facilitate care delivery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Connecting2gether (C2) platform is a web and mobile-based information-sharing tool that aims to improve care for children with medical complexity and their families. A key feature of C2 is secure messaging, which enables parental caregivers (PCs) to communicate with their child's care team members (CTMs) in a timely manner.
Objective: The objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate the use of a secure messaging system, (2) examine and compare the content of messages to email and phone calls, and (3) explore PCs' and CTMs' perceptions and experiences using secure messaging as a method of communication.
Background: Children with medical complexity (CMC) require the expertise of many care providers spanning different disciplines, institutions, and settings of care. This leads to duplicate health records, breakdowns in communication, and limited opportunities to provide comprehensive, collaborative care. The objectives of this study were to explore communication challenges and solutions/recommendations from multiple perspectives including (i) parents, (ii) HCPs - hospital and community providers, and (iii) teachers of CMC with a goal of informing patient care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Technological and medical advances have led to a growing population of children with medical complexity (CMC) defined by substantial medical needs, healthcare utilisation and morbidity. These children are at a high risk of missed, fragmented and/or inappropriate care, and families bear extraordinary financial burden and stress. While small in number (<1% of children), this group uses ~1/3 of all child healthcare resources, and need coordinated care to optimise their health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Canada's judicial system there are more than 31,700 youths admitted to correctional services each year. Given the prevalence of documented medical problems and high-risk behavior in this population, it is important to assess the immunization status of adolescents admitted to juvenile detention facilities. We completed a chart review of all youth admitted to an adolescent custody facility in Kingston, Ontario, between January 2003 and October 2005.
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