Critical Success Factors of Street Haven's Residential Addictions Treatment Program for Women.

Street Haven's residential addictions treatment program offers a 90-day residential treatment program to highly vulnerable women who suffer from significant health and social care complexity, including homelessness, experience with gender-based violence, mental illness and chronic diseases. Despite the complexity of the needs of the clients, the program supports recovery, greater housing and enhanced overall well-being for the women it serves. The critical factors contributing to the success of the program include client readiness, pre-treatment programming, group-based programming, evidence-based programming, harm reduction approaches and a whole-person approach.

Is public health ready to participate in the transformation of the healthcare system?

The healthcare system in Canada is undergoing significant transformation in response to three major interrelated pressures: the overall burden of illness is rising, patients are getting poor quality of care and healthcare costs are inexorably rising. One idea to guide this change is to transform the primary care system into a community-based primary healthcare (CBPH) system. This paper discusses, in particular, the readiness of public health to participate in the transformation to a CBPH system.

Survival duration among patients with a noncancer diagnosis admitted to a palliative care unit: a retrospective study.

Background: Palliative care unit (PCU) beds are a limited resource in Canada, so PCU admission is restricted to patients with a short prognosis. Anecdotally, PCUs further restrict admission of patients with noncancer diagnoses out of fear that they will "oversurvive" and reduce bed availability. This raises concerns that noncancer patients have unequal access to PCU resources.

Healthcare integration: the study of the toronto central regional hospice palliative care "system" and its integration challenges.

The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's End-of-Life strategy did not result in integrated hospice palliative care (HPC) systems. Consequently, HPC has evolved differently across the 14 local health integration networks. In the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network, the HPC sector lacks foundational systems integration elements: infrastructure and tools that can ensure optimal access and delivery; centralized data capture and management resources to support delivery and planning; and central planning and performance authority that will further improvements in systems delivery, planning and accountability.

Infection prevention and control learning preferences of nurses sampled at a teaching hospital.

A pilot study was conducted within the medical-surgical intensive care unit (MSICU) of the Toronto General Hospital site of the University Health Network during the winter/spring (March-June) of 1999 to examine nurses' learning preferences relevant to infection prevention and control (IPAC). The majority of the nurses sampled indicated a preference for face-to-face infection prevention and control education (seminars). Such seminars were preferred on an annual basis by most respondents.

Contract management of Ontario's cancer surgery wait times strategy.

The province of Ontario, as a result of the First Ministers' Meeting, was committed to addressing surgery wait times in Ontario. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's response to this commitment was the Wait Times Strategy (WTS) initiative, which addressed access issues with the aim of positively impacting wait times in cancer surgery. Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) was tasked with managing the cancer surgery WTS.

Cancer Care Ontario and integrated cancer programs: portrait of a performance management system and lessons learned.

Purpose: A performance management system has been implemented by Cancer Care Ontario (CCO). This system allows for the monitoring and management of 11 integrated cancer programs (ICPs) across the Province of Ontario. The system comprises of four elements: reporting frequency, reporting requirements, review meetings and accountability and continuous improvement activities.