Abstract
Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) are a new model for organizing health and social services into integrated networks of care in local communities across the province of Ontario, Canada. OHTs are voluntary partnerships that have been approved in phases by the provincial government based on key factors, such as the breadth of partners and sectors involved, engagement with primary care, co-design with the communities being served, and having a basis for governance, decision-making and resource allocation. Initially launched in 2019 with a first cohort of 24 OHTs, there are now 58 OHTs serving the entire geography of Ontario. At maturity, all OHTs are intended to be clinically and fiscally accountable for the population health of the residents in their communities. With each OHT at different stages of development, the government recently selected 12 OHTs from across the province to accelerate at a faster pace and support a learning system to advance the OHT model provincially.
The workshop will invite participants to share in the journey of the OHTs by understanding the challenges and opportunities experienced as our 58 OHTs collectively move forward with developing local integrated systems of care and advancing population health management. This discussion will include how we balance implementation of government direction and local community priorities within a traditional policy and funding environment that was not designed to support integrated care delivery. Using the 9 pillars of integrated care as our framework, we will showcase the lessons we are learning for how to co-design and co-develop integrated health and social care networks across a diverse population of 16M people within a geography that spans urban, suburban, rural/remote, and northern communities. We will also explore the need for adaptations in system design that consider the vast differences in population size, demographics, and equity challenges across a geography of 1M km2 (larger than France and Spain combined). The workshop will include table-top discussions facilitated by a cross-section of OHT leaders and community representatives to explore how the 9 pillars of integrated care apply within integrated care systems that are in different stages of development, including understanding where the OHTs are progressing well, where we are struggling to make headway, sustainability of this model, and what we need to consider for our next phases of development. Workshop participants will be invited to share their own experiences and lessons learned from advancing integration in their local contexts. This discussion will combine shared experiences and differing experiences from across the globe to enable all participants to collectively reflect and learn what it truly takes to make system change at scale.
This workshop will be of particular interest to jurisdictions that are in the formation phase of integrated care systems. For participants who are in more mature integrated care systems, we will invite them to share how their own experiences can help other integrated care systems, including OHTs, accelerate our development.