The board of directors of North Wellington Health Care (NWHC) met on Dec. 10 to discuss rural mental health services and NWHC’s budget.
NWHC’s president and CEO Jerome Quenneville and patient care manager Gianni Accettola provided the board with an update on plans to improve rural Wellington mental health services.
The Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network (WWLHIN) is leading a review on Guelph/Wellington mental health service and the results of the review will be released soon.
A few new initiatives to improve mental health service access have been implemented with health care partners, NWHC, Groves Memorial Community Hospital, Guelph General Hospital and Homewood Health Centre.
They include a new standardized medical clearance form and process and improving patient access to Homewood; improved discharge communication and follow-up care for patients; daily updates shared with health care partners on the status of available mental health beds; and adding mental health bed registry to CrtiCall a 24-hour-a-day emergency referral service for health care practitioners across the Ontario.
Wellington County OPP and the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington Dufferin recently launched a new integrated mobile police and crisis team. OPP officers and crisis workers will attend addiction and mental health calls in the community together with the goal to improve wait times for people in crisis, and avoid unnecessary trips to the emergency department.
Should police attend a call and determine an apprehension is required under the mental health act, officers will transport the individual to the closest hospital.
The NWHC board approved the 2016/17 budget. No significant service changes are expected.
The WWLHIN guides the budget planning process and has asked that hospital budgets be prepared without any funding increases.
Historically, NWHC receives a mid-year allocation of nearly 1% which has better enabled the hospital to deal with ongoing inflation. The NWHC board is hopeful that this will happen again in the coming year, officials state.
