THE CAREGIVER TOOLKIT:
THE B.C. INTERIOR HEALTH
AUTHORITY EXPERIENCE
Elisabeth Antifeau & Marian Krawczyk
INTERIOR HEALTH AUTHORIT Y: CONTEXT
 Over 742,000 residents of the Southern Interior B.C.
 Large geographic area covering almost 216,000 square
kilometres
 Elisabeth Antifeau: Clinical Coordinator/Practice Lead,
Special Populations, Community Integrated Health Services
 15 Practice Leads in total, 3 per 5 portfolios: Community
Care, Mental Health, Aboriginal Health, Promotion and
Prevention and Primary Health/Chronic Disease Management
 Responsible for system-wide planning
 Beginning a ‘management independent’ planning process for
horizontal integration – 1 st meeting March 27, 2012
 Of fer a series of workshops on the Caregiver Toolkit (in
conjunction with other resources)
HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION INITIATIVE
Facing the same issues as many other health authorities:
 Geographically large and diverse (challenging to meet)
 Constraints financially, temporally and in professional capacity
 “Siloing”: Vertical integration functional, lack of horizontal
integration
 Many practice alignment projects
 Lack of complete community supports
 Inappropriate and/or early residential care admissions
 Enormous pressure to deflect and defer residential admissions
 Large ALC population
 Need consolidated care strategy across silos
 Barrier for home discharge is caregiver burnout; in part due to
system neglect
WHY USE THE CGPL?
“Caregivers are impor tant members of the care plan
and health team”.
 General discussion for generating ideas, networks and
knowledge at:




Staff meetings
Workshops
Conferences
Clinical consults
 Organization-Specific Knowledge Transfer




Between
Between
Between
Between
clinicians
clinicians
clinicians
clinicians
within discipline
across disciplines
and administrators
and caregivers
WHY USE THE CGPL?
“We’re really looking for different resources we can apply
across our system as we develop”.
To include caregiver voice, perspectives and needs
To build capacity
For developing initiatives in system redesign
To develop practice standards
To develop front-line case management
To identify the gaps
To identify opportunities to work together
To address the gaps to change outcome for clients and
families
 To look at commonalities and linkages, sharing experience
and knowledge








PROJECTS & INITIATIVES
“I see the CGPL as a tool to development of programs and
policy, and the SPRG as central to the education of case
managers”.
 Four proposals currently in various stages of submission




Respite
Caregiver self-management
Post-discharge
Community nursing innovation
PROJECTS & INITIATIVES
Horizontal integration (Practice)




Generate discussion
Knowledge transfer
Capacity-building
Facilitation of care planning across silos
Patient-focused project initiatives for system redesign (Policy)
 Program design and implementation
 Need to ask:
 “Is there a caregiver?”
 “What is their role?”
 “Do we have any indicators?”
 To ‘profile’ caregivers using existing data to identify and begin to
address gaps to change outcome for clients and families
Future Research
 To develop research questions
 To ensure the perspective and needs of caregivers, not just clients
 Evaluation
BENEFITS, CHALLENGES & TIPS
 Successes
 Easy to use as a ‘reminder’ document
 Challenges
 Lack of time
 Many competing initiatives
 Lack of awareness of the importance of caregivers
 Tips
 Be patient
 Use concrete examples
NEXT STEPS
 A series of webinar workshops (to be determined)
 Goals of workshops:
 To introduce and use three resources:
 The Dementia Policy Lens (DPL),
 The Seniors Mental Health Policy Lens (SMPL), and
 The Caregiver Policy Lens (CGPL).
 To facilitate Integrated Team’s ability to develop consistent practice
standards across portfolios through horizontal integration initiatives
and collaboration.
 For more information:
 Elisabeth Antifeau
 Marian Krawczyk
Elisabeth.Antifeau@interiorhealth.ca
mkrawczy@sfu.ca