as a PDF - Divisions of Family Practice

2015 ANNUAL REPORT
122
UBC Residents: 15
Programs: 11
GP Members:
Our Mission:
Happy and healthy GPs providing
fun and innovative health care.
Our Purpose:
Promoting sustainable primary
health care through programs which
address the health care issues of
our community and physicians.
Abbotsford
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Abbotsford Division of Family Practice 2015 Annual Report
Message from the Chair
Highlights + a view to the future
Each year, it is my pleasure to present this
Annual Report on behalf of our board and
members. It is an opportunity to not only
review, but also celebrate, all the milestones
the Abbotsford Division of Family Practice
has achieved and continues to strive for. Our
mission is for Abbotsford to be a community
of happy and healthy GPs providing fun and
innovative health care. Our achievements are
only possible through the direct engagement
of you—our members—so, THANK YOU for
your continued passion and involvement.
Services, with guidance from the physicians
who work there. This allows the work we do
with Abbotsford’s youth to move from its
previous innovation stage into a sustainable,
permanent service in our community.
Membership
6
7
Locums
GP
Specialists
11
Focused
Practitioners
Our Residential Care and Hospital Care
programs are also under review (see article
below for full details). We are gaining many
insights through this process—including
learning how we must paddle together
(especially when the water gets rough!) in
order to steer our canoe towards our goal.
15
79
UBC residents
Full Service
Family Physicians
19
ER Physicians
Partnerships
The Division is currently working on a
total of 18 initiatives—initiatives that are
strengthening our relationships with our
community. Partnerships are now the
cornerstone of everything we take on,
and as a result, our division is enjoying
greater awareness in the community and
we are able to move our work forward
effectively and efficiently because of
these important collaborations.
Main Programs:
•
•
•
•
Abbotsford Youth Health Centre
Residential Care Program
Hospital Care Program
A GP for Me
Key Stakeholders & Partnerships:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fraser Health Authority
Abbotsford Community Services
City of Abbotsford
Residential Care Facilities
University of the Fraser Valley
Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce
Healthy Abbotsford
Review. Rethink. Redesign.
We all have a lot on our plates. It is critical to be
always asking: Is this the best way? Is this the
right way? Is there another way? Over the last
year, the division consolidated the Abbotsford
Youth Clinic so it is under the operational
management of Abbotsford Community
A GP for Me
A GP for Me is the division’s biggest project
to-date and will form a large portion of our
focus into next year. Through a one-time
funding opportunity, the division is actively
working on four initiatives designed to
address patient attachment, GP recruitment
& retention, practice optimization and
test the waters of team-based care. These
initiatives are only successful in as much as
our members are willing to participate and
be involved. I invite and encourage you to
join physician lead, Dr. Justin Boparai, and
the A GP for Me Implementation Team as we
leverage these opportunities together. Please
read the A GP for Me Summary on page 3.
Gratitude
A big THANK YOU to our board of directors:
their contributions epitomize our mission
of happy and healthy GPs providing fun
and innovative health care. They show up,
they step up, they represent our community
well, and they make hard decisions for the
betterment of primary care in Abbotsford.
Please join me in thanking the following
individuals for their leadership:
• Dr. John Chan: Treasurer
& RCP representative
• Dr. Kara Aiton: Secretary & Child
Youth Mental Health
• Dr. Virgil Danescu: Physician Lead,
Hospital Care Program
• Dr. Justin Boparai: Physician Lead,
A GP for Me
• Dr. Elizabeth Watt: Abbotsford
Youth Health Clinic & NP4BC
• Dr. Glenn Collingridge: Incoming
Treasurer & Healthy Abbotsford
• Dr. Reg Peters: Shared Care
& Physician Wellness
• Dr. Richard Egolf: A GP for Me
Governance
Special thanks to John and Reg for
serving on our board for three years,
and for their dedication, commitment
and wisdom. We will miss them.
The coming year is sure to bring more new
milestones for our division. We are looking
forward to the outcomes of the GPSC
(General Practice Services Committee)
Visioning process which is expected to
impact the future of primary care across
the province. And at the local level, we will
continue to chart a course that matches the
work you, our members, need from us with
the goals of community-based health care.
Sincerely,
Dan
Reviewed and Redesigned:
T
wo of the Division’s founding initiatives
have been under review and redesign
over the last year. While the Hospital
Care Program (HCP) has had to react to the
growing needs of Abbotsford Regional
Hospital and Cancer Centre (ARHCC) and
the shrinking capacity of our community of
GPs, the Residential Care Program (RCP) has
moved from a Ministry of Health pilot to a
province-wide initiative through the GPSC.
The HCP Working Group met diligently over 10
months to collaboratively design a program that
could meet the demands of the 19,000 annual
inpatients of ARHCC. The community-based
GP model of care has been one of a kind in
regional hospitals. The determination of the GPs
involved in the program has been a testament
to the willingness of our GP community to
stay involved in hospital care. Changes in
the program are still being determined and
should be resolved by the end of 2015.
With a new provincial scope, the Abbotsford
RCP program has taken the opportunity
to align with the new provincial clinical
outcomes and best practices. Working with
Fraser Health, residential care sites, and
feedback from providers, the group has
developed a new patient-centred system of
care that includes ongoing education and
team support. The transition for change will
occur over 2015–2016 and includes ongoing
evaluation and feedback from all involved. ■
Abbotsford Division of Family Practice 2015 Annual Report
3
Shared Care: Grass Roots to Provincial Initiatives
F
our Shared Care projects have been
initiated this year in Abbotsford,
addressing mental health to cervical cancer screening. The partnerships
between family physicians, specialists,
and other allied health care providers,
through these projects, are key to addressing the barriers to care.
Abbotsford has the highest rate of child
and youth mental health hospital intakes
in Fraser Health, surpassing Surrey and
Richmond. That statistic provided the
impetus to launch our Local Action Team as
part of the provincial Child and Youth Mental
Health and Substance Use Collaborative in
partnership with the Ministry of Children
and Family Development (MCFD). A group
of 20 CYMH community stakeholders
have worked hard to develop projects
to increase the number of children,
youth, and their families receiving timely
access to integrated mental health and
substance use services and supports in
Abbotsford. Over the next year look for new
supports to help you address this need.
In the spring we also launched our ”Circle
of Care” through the Polypharmacy Risk
Reduction Initiative. More than 40 GPs,
specialists, pharmacists, and residential care
nurses participated in a workshop to help
address geriatric medication interactions.
The workshop and tools are components
of the medication review protocols
available through our RCP program.
A second session will be held October 13.
Abbotsford’s population is south Asian,
it is an important health issue. Next steps
include public education and a physician
lead workshop to assess how this need
can be addressed in our community.
Another upcoming project is the provincial
heart failure strategy initiative, where
Abbotsford has been selected as a pilot
community. Through Pathways, some of the
identified needs in orthopedic transitions
and neurology have been remedied, but we
will continue to evaluate the possibilities
of further addressing these issues. ■
Over the summer a working group formed
to address the need for cervical cancer
screening for south Asian women.
Members of this demographic are more
likely to see a second biphasic spike
in cervical cancer and are least likely
to have been screened. Given 23% of
A GP for Me
issues are among the main health
concerns in our community
• Abbotsford has a number of distinct
vulnerable populations with unique
health care needs: new to Canada,
seniors, youth, and the homeless
• Approximately 26,000 Abbotsford
residents do not have a family
doctor and an estimated 5,000
are currently looking for one
Dr. Justin Boparai, A GP for Me Lead
A
GP for Me is a provincial initiative being
implemented across BC by 33 local divisions of family practice. The goals of
A GP for Me are to: 1) increase the capacity of
the primary care system to improve patient access; 2) help more patients who want a family
doctor to find one, while improving support for
vulnerable patients; and 3) strengthen doctorpatient relationships to improve patient health.
Abbotsford began the Assessment & Planning
phase in May 2014 and received approval
(and funding) for its Implementation Plan
on March 31, 2015. Through a series of
consultations with physicians, medical office
staff, allied health care professionals, patients,
community organizations, and municipal,
regional and provincial health care partners,
we identified the following key challenges:
• 26% of family physicians
plan to retire by 2023
• Chronic conditions, mental health,
substance use, and weight/obesity
Our A GP for Me Implementation Team,
led by Dr. Justin Boparai, Physician
Lead, and the Steering Committee, is
currently addressing these challenges
through four main initiatives:
• Practice Optimization: Supporting
doctors in their practices to enhance
A GP for Me Strategies
GP capacity to accept new patients
• Recruitment & Retention: Making
Abbotsford an attractive landing site
for new and relocating family doctors
• Patient Attachment Mechanism:
Creating a central registry of family
doctors accepting new patients
• Team-based Care: Testing a promising
model of care; placing registered
dietitians within family practice clinics to
serve patients with weight/diabetes issues
The Implementation phase began
April 1, 2015 and runs through March 31,
2016. Ongoing updates and plans for
continued primary care improvements are
communicated via the Abbotsford Division
of Family Practice monthly newsletter. ■
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Abbotsford Division of Family Practice 2015 Annual Report
Nurse Practitioners Programs off the Ground
I
n partnership with Fraser Health, the
Division has worked diligently to initiate
three of the four accepted NP4BC (Nurse
Practitioners for British Columbia) proposals.
NPs Rona Loewen and Jamie Tourond
began working through the Abbotsford
Youth Health Centre to serve Youth at Risk.
Since March they have provided care to
underage parents and their children in the
New Beginnings program, which operates at
Mouat high school in a donated clinic space
and provides outreach to youth shut-ins and
those marginalized under the age of 25.
The Embrace Program, another NP partnership that includes Women’s Resource Society
of the Fraser Valley, the Surrey North Delta
Division, and Surrey Women’s Centre, is
facilitated through the Forensic Nursing
program of Fraser Health. The focus of the
program is to provide follow-up care to
victims of assault. In Abbotsford, NPs Anjie
Gibson and Hanna Varto provide postdischarge care to patients of ARHCC’s forensic
unit as well as providing care Mondays and
Thursdays in clinic space located in the Warm
Zone. To date they have helped 28 ARHCC
forensic patients and see an average of
20 patients a week at the Warm Zone.
Positive Health is another NP program
recently launched. As a partnership
between primary care and public health,
NP Monica Gregory will provide care to
those without a GP who have contracted
HIV/AIDS or Hep C or who maybe suffering
from addictions. She will work in Abbotsford
every Wednesday in locations close to
marginalized populations. Monica joined
this program after years of working in
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and has
a wealth of clinical knowledge around
these issues that she is willing to share. ■
28 physicians participating
in
7 committees
13 working groups
and
12
Community Tables
Happy Healthy GPs celebrate Walk with Your Doc.
Board of Directors
Staff
Dr. Dan Husband, Chair
Dr. John Chan, Treasurer
Dr. Kara Aiton, Secretary
Dr. Virgil Danescu, HCP (Hospital Care Program) Lead
Dr. Justin Boparai, A GP for Me Lead
Dr. Elizabeth Watt, AYHC (Abbotsford Youth Health Centre) Lead
Dr. Glenn Collingridge (Incoming Treasurer)
Dr. Reg Peters
Dr. Richard Egolf
Michelle Favero, Executive Director
Leslie Gmur, A GP for Me
Recruitment and Retention
and Care Coordinator
Raymon Grewal, HCP/RCP (Residential
Care Program) Project Coordinator
Bohdan Zajcew, A GP for Me Strategic Lead
Louise Smith, Child and Youth Mental
Health Collaborative Project Lead
The Divisions of Family Practice Initiative is sponsored by the
General Practice Services Committee, a joint committee of the
BC Ministry of Health and Doctors of BC.
www.divisionsbc.ca/abbotsford
Abbotsford
Abbotsford Division of Family Practice
202–2276 Clearbrook Road
Abbotsford BC V2T 2X5
Phone: 604.746.3302
Email: abbotsford@divisionsbc.ca
Photo Credits:
Cover – City of Abbotsford
All other photos – Abbotsford DFP