Search update: Next steps on our PATH

Five communities proceed to RFP phase.

Last summer The Change Foundation launched a groundbreaking project called PATH – Partners Advancing Transitions in Healthcare: a first with Ontario patients, to engage and support an innovative Ontario community coalition of providers, patients and informal caregivers. Their mission is to undertake a care redesign project with local input, impact and potential province-wide learning. Six months later, we’ve travelled much further down the PATH to finding our final community. The Change Foundation was buoyed by the strong response to our Letter of Intent (LOI) call of July 2011. A six-member review panel has short-listed five promising coalitions to proceed to a second full-RFP stage. The winning community will be announced this spring, and be funded over the next two years to improve the healthcare experiences of seniors with chronic illness moving across the continuum of care, with particular attention paid to transition points.

The six-member review panel is comprised of senior Foundation staff and representatives from the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council. And to ensure a fair and open process, The Foundation has also commissioned the services of a fairness advisor to act as an independent third party to observe, monitor and provide oversight over both phases of the selection process.

As part of the final RFP evaluation process, and in keeping with the Foundation’s hands-on approach, select members of the review panel plan a site visit to each of the five communities. In early May, the review panel will reassemble to select the leading PATH community.

Stay tuned for big news on the PATH front this spring. And watch for important updates on other fronts: we will share a flavour of what we’ve heard in recent public consultations with Ontario seniors and their families and friends and detail plans to engage with our system’s healthcare leaders — both key parts of our Strategic Plan (2010-13) implementation.

Also see related updates:

Engagement update: Emerging themes from regional consultations with seniors and caregivers
Research update: The Foundation consults Ontario health system leaders