MESSAGE FROM OUR LEADERS
2022-2023 Joint Message from Windsor Regional Hospital President and CEO David Musyj; Chair of the Board of Directors, Anthony Paniccia; Chief of Staff Dr. Wassim Saad; and Karen Riddell, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Nursing Executive.
The 2022-2023 fiscal year was another challenging one for the healthcare sector, a period when month by month, the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic gradually loosened. Windsor Regional Hospital rose to the challenge of the pandemic and ended the year well positioned for the future, with our WRH team shining stronger and more optimistic about the years ahead.
Symbolically, the eventual removal of mandatory masking in most areas of the hospital, the return of our beloved volunteers, and loosened restrictions on loved ones visiting patients helped the hospital return closer to a sense of normalcy not seen since the pandemic took hold near the end of the 2019-20 fiscal year.
Although the impact of COVID-19 began to recede, the challenge for our hard-working and dedicated employees and professional staff remained apparent, with high patient volumes and surgical backlogs still ongoing issues we continue to take on alongside our peer hospitals supported by a provincial government committed to transitioning the health care system into an era of stability going forward.
Throughout it all, we could not be more proud of the resiliency once again demonstrated this past year by our 4000-plus team of WRH personnel who continue to rise to all challenges with incredible dedication to our patients and community, and collaboration with our colleagues and system partners.
For the first time in four years, our annual report isn't seized by a focus on the pandemic. Indeed, throughout the COVID-19 era and particularly through 2022-23, WRH continued to innovate for our patients, worked to strengthen our post-COVID workplace culture, and remained steadfast in our pursuit of a new state-of-the-art acute care hospital to serve generations to come.
STRENGTHENING OUR INNOVATION
While steering a course through a pandemic and other health system challenges, WRH continued to innovate, modernizing our equipment and adding new practices to our program and service offerings that will benefit thousands of patients in the years to come.
In an effort to reduce wait times and tackle a backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Province of Ontario committed to doubling our Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) capacity in the Windsor-Essex region. The newly approved provincial funding allowed new MRI machines at WRH's Ouellette Campus and another for our partners at Erie Shores HealthCare in Leamington - bringing the total number of machines in Windsor-Essex to four.
Additionally, in January, WRH was proud to host a visit by Premier Doug Ford to announce a long-awaited, $30-million provincial investment to move our cardiac catheterization lab out of the basement of the Ouellette campus to the second floor, where the program will also be expanded to add a second cath lab table and greatly increase access to this life-saving treatment. In addition, the funding boost also allowed WRH to expand the Cancer Centre to accommodate a new linear accelerator used for radiation therapy, which results in improved and faster patient access to treatment.
In October 2022, Windsor Surgical Centre and WRH were proud to announce the continuation of their partnership that started in early 2020 with the opening of a brand new facility to serve thousands of eye surgery patients every year while freeing up hospital resources.
We also saw new, innovative surgical approaches added to the service offerings at WRH. In October 2022, WRH began performing Endovascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR), and several other advanced hybrid techniques to manage aortic pathologies, from abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA’s) to aortoiliac occlusive disease, to managing peripheral aneurysms and occlusions in the legs. A few months later in February 2023, Dr. Greg Jasey and Dr. Mike McCaffrey became the first surgeons in Ontario to perform a total hip replacement with the assistance of the Stryker Mako SmartRobotics system, a specialized robot used to perform joint replacement surgery.
We were also proud to be innovative not just through technology, but in new developments with local partnerships developments aimed at better serving our diverse population. A Transitional Care Pathway program was developed to provide access to follow-up care for mild to moderate mental health patients after they’ve been released from WRH’s Mental Health Assessment Unit, in collaboration with the Windsor Family Health Team - Windsor Team Care Centre. This approach to post-acute care has been demonstrating positive results in supporting mental health patients after they've been discharged from the hospital. Elsewhere, our NICU Family Advisory Care Team, which includes parents from the community, spent a year putting together a Peer Support program for parents of babies who have been hospitalized at WRH.
Our hospital was also proud to promote the One Team Recovery partnership between the Windsor Team Care Centre, Family Services Windsor-Essex, and the Windsor Pride Community. Given that members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community face unique challenges including a higher rate of addiction, the new program provides participants with a safe and inclusive space to receive help with their recovery.
PROMOTING A STRONG WORKPLACE CULTURE
Acknowledging the stress and challenge our workforce during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, WRH took significant steps to improve workplace culture, with a focus on giving our team members opportunities to relax and restore during their downtime. Our Workplace Wellness program allows employees and professional staff the opportunity to participate in activities around Windsor-Essex - everything from cooking to kayaking, from yoga to kickboxing, from exploring historical sites to painting and craft-making - made possible through generous community groups and businesses providing time for exclusive WRH staff events. We look forward to expanding this increasingly popular program in the 2023-24 fiscal year that allows our work family to enjoy time together and with their own families and friends.
Improving the workforce also requires ensuring we have more staff to support each other. Ongoing challenges in the healthcare sector require innovative approaches to recruiting nurses and allied health professionals to care for our community. Several crucial provincial recruitment programs proved fruitful and will continue to be going forward.
The Extern Program reimburses selected Ontario hospitals for the cost of employing nursing students during their studies. Each organization has the flexibility to identify how Externs and EMCs can be incorporated to best support workflow and patient management. Since the start of the WRH Extern program, it has hired 752 externs. By the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year, close to 400 externs were working at WRH.
A second provincial program - the Community Commitment Program for Nurses (CCPN) - attracts Registered Nurses, Registered Practical Nurses, and Nurse Practitioners to work in the hospitals and other health sector facilities. The program provides $25,000 in grant funding to eligible nurses in exchange for a two-year commitment to an eligible employer. As of the close of the fiscal year, WRH had been able to hire 200+ nurses using the CCPN.
Further, through the Supervised Practice Experience Partnership program, internationally trained nurses can complete a supervised practice experience to help get them working in Ontario faster, strengthening hospital frontlines. WRH has placed 37 individuals at the hospital since the program began.
CONTINUED PURSUIT TOWARDS A NEW STATE-OF-THE-ART HOSPITAL FOR WINDSOR-ESSEX
Early in the 2022-23 fiscal year, our Project Management Office (PMO) Team launched an engagement initiative, seeking community input on the design of the new hospital. The goal of the Together We Build campaign was to ensure the future design of the new hospital reflects the needs and interests of hospital staff, professional staff and the community. Participants had the opportunity to share feedback through a variety of ways including 11 program and service-specific town halls and the use of an online engagement tool with surveys and ideas boards. Throughout the campaign: 351 people attended town halls and an additional 991 people viewed them on youtube, 2864 people visited the project engagement site, 251 surveys were completed and 107 ideas were shared on the site.
A summary of the feedback, including overall themes and program-specific themes is available on the project website. Information collected throughout this process, as well as the project vision and design principles which also reflect community priorities will be used to guide decision-making throughout the project. In March 2023, an additional town hall was held to discuss how community input was incorporated into the Stage 1.3 submission to the Ministry of Health.
In addition, 34 community representatives were directly involved in the planning process as members of the User Groups working with project planners and architects on the functional program and early block diagrams for the Stage 1.3 submission. The community reps included members of the hospital Patient and Family Advisory Committee, the Chief of Essex-Windsor EMS, and representatives from all eight First Nation communities represented by the London District Chiefs Council.
With ongoing support from community partners and our provincial government, we look forward to further progressing towards the eventual opening of this new hospital as we move to the next stage in the capital process.
WHAT'S IN STORE FOR 2023-2024
As we move further from the throes of the pandemic, we look forward to seeing the smiling, unmasked faces of our colleagues, and the faces of loved ones of our patients to whom we provide comfort and compassion in their time of need.
We know the days will continue to be long for many of our team members. High volumes and periods of overcapacity continue to be an issue and we will continue to devote time to discussion options with our community partners as well as with ministry officials as we move forward together to address systemic challenges.
We continue to make progress on our backlog of postponed non-urgent and non-emergency surgeries and procedures. That backlog is much lower than it was prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the continued hard work of our administrative teams and staff to complete more procedures as quickly and safely as we can.
We also look forward to further collaborations with local emergency response providers to address mental health challenges in our community, including the new Nurse and Police Team (NPT) partnership. Announced early in the new fiscal year, this program was already showing positive results in responding earlier and more effectively to non-emergency, substance use-related incidents. The goal of the officer-nurse teams is to deliver immediate care and connect individuals in need with the appropriate support services while steering them away from the criminal justice system and hospital emergency rooms.
As noted earlier, we are looking to expand our efforts to improve Workplace Wellness for our employees and professional staff with opportunities to address both physical and mental well-being throughout our workforce.
We are also keen to pursue enhanced research opportunities with fantastic community partners, including through the WE-SPARK Health Institute collaboration with Erie Shores HealthCare, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, St. Clair College, and the University of Windsor. WE-SPARK is developing the knowledge to address health system concerns, advance discoveries, innovation, and technology, and train and promote excellence among our healthcare professionals of today and tomorrow.
Above all else, we are excited that 2023-24 will not be marked by the daily ups and downs of life in a community hospital during a pandemic, but by further promotion and openness of how we address our challenges and create opportunities to build on our recent successes.
Thank you to the amazing WRH team of frontline and behind-the-scenes professionals who have performed so wonderfully in some of the most challenging circumstances of the modern healthcare era; and thank you to our community who have supported us through a pandemic and into the next era of health care in Windsor-Essex.