Regional project underway to address gaps in children’s health
Thursday September 27, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
Concerned that child health was not “well-reflected” in the agenda of any of the province’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), Don Buchanan and the Child and Youth Health Partnership at McMaster Children’s Hospital have engaged their local LHINs in an effort establish child health as a top priority.

“Children make up 25 per cent of our population and no one is speaking for them and no one has brought their concerns forward,” says Buchanan, co-ordinator of the Child and Youth Health Partnership.

“We started early on by making contact with our LHIN and saying, ‘I think you missed a little bit of a problem here,’” Buchanan says, adding there are a number of issues in children’s health that need to be addressed.

At that point a relationship between Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network (HNHB LHIN), Waterloo Wellington LHIN (WW LHIN) and the Child and Youth Health Partnership began. Discussions have been ongoing since.

Buchanan says both LHINs were eager and willing to address the children’s health concerns held by McMaster Children’s Hospital, part of the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation — a Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) subscriber.

The goal of the project is to inventory inpatient and outpatient pediatric services available in both LHINs, compile a summary of service gaps and develop a comprehensive plan for an integrated health system for children and youth.

“We came to the conclusion that what we needed to do was stand back a little bit and look at a much broader view of all of the different child health services that contribute towards children’s health,” Buchanan says.

Given the scope of children’s health, the decision was made to focus on children’s services in the acute care settings. About 95 per cent of children hospitalized for specialized (or tertiary) services in the HNHB LHIN and about 65 per cent of children hospitalized in the WW LHIN for specialized (or tertiary) services are admitted to McMaster Children’s Hospital.

“We bring some expertise in child health to the picture (and) the LHINs bring some expertise in developing an integrated network of services and that’s really the goal that both of us have,” Buchanan says.

“Instead of having eight of 10 different institutions who each plan for child health in their community, we really need to think about how we weave those together into an integrated inter-dependant network.”

Through data-analysis, the idea is to identify what works and what doesn’t in order to put best practices in place moving forward.

“We all have some strengths and we all have some weaknesses and the objective is to learn what our weaknesses are and learn from other people who have strengths in that same area,” Buchanan says.

Moving forward, an outline of the planning process is expected to be ready by the end of October with the full plan completed by April 2008.