At their regular meeting on March 27, members of the Sun Country Regional Health Authority approved a set of nine projects for improved health care during the 2013-14 fiscal year.
The new projects include improved care provided to patients with dementia, which will include identifying gaps in care, a process to diagnose early/moderate dementia, and more staff education.
The authority has set to begin a plan to encourage healthy weights for children. That will include staff education, modeling good nutrition among adults, and compliance with nutrition policies within the Region.
Improved recognition and treatment for stroke patients will also become a focus, including an increase in the number of referrals for patients diagnosed with stroke or TIA (transient ischemic attack or mini-stroke) to either the Stroke Prevention Clinic in Regina or a neurologist, staff and family education.
Improve the use of appropriate antibiotics is another objective of the region. That will include the standard use of identified antibiotics for all surgeries; standard treatment for pneumonia in hospital and cellulitis for outpatients.
Another focus will be improved hand hygiene for all health care workers. Success will require that 85 per cent of all staff use appropriate hand hygiene methods in all audits and will stop the work when hand hygiene protocol is not followed.
Injury reduction among staff is another project discussed. Success will be reached if Sun Country Health Region (SCHR) sees a 25 per cent reduction in the injuries related to back and shoulders and a 25 per cent decrease in the amount of time lost due to injuries.
It will also be a focus to improve medication administration in long term care facilities and to reduce medication errors to residents by 50 per cent or greater.
Improved safety for clients/residents/patients is another goal, which will be reached if critical incidents are reduced by 50 per cent and staff members increase their reporting on incidents by 25 per cent.
The region plans to see improved recruitment and retention of doctors. SCHR wants to improve the retention rate of doctors to 75 per cent, recruit doctors to vacant practices, establish a marketing program at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, and increase public understanding of the recruitment process and the roles/responsibilities of all the partners in the process.
All of the 2012-13 improvement projects will be continued as daily work throughout SCHR.
