Applauding a year of achievements

Looking back on my first year as President and Chief Executive Officer at Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare, I have so much pride for the remarkable things our team has achieved as one organization operating two sites.

Recovery and revitalization from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant focus over the past 12 months, but so too has been our focus on new initiatives to improve the patient experience. Our accomplishments are a credit to the hard work and dedicated efforts of our entire team and system partners, and we look forward to more achievements in the year to come. Here are some of my favourites from the past year:

Furthering our commitment to quality and safety, we earned the top rating of Accredited with Exemplary Standing from Accreditation Canada following a four-day onsite survey at both sites in November 2022. Evaluated against 2,150 best-in-class standards of care, MAHC met 100% of all Required Organization Practices, and 99% of the accreditation program standards the organization was measured against across eight quality dimensions. 

Accreditation Canada surveyors with our team

Through an increased focus on partnerships and collaboration with the Muskoka and Area Ontario Health Team and other key peers we:

• opened a Heart Function Clinic at the South Muskoka site for care of patients in our community with Congestive Heart Failure to provide a higher level of cardiac follow-up and care for Muskoka residents within their own community; 
  

  

  Heart Function Clinic
  

• launched the Hospital to Home program with Closing the Gap to create a seamless transition for patients to leave the hospital and successfully return to their home with dedicated resources and support before, during and after their discharge;
• partnered with Muskoka Hills Retirement Villa in Bracebridge for seven transitional care beds to relieve occupancy pressures;
• marked one year of partnership in palliative care with Hospice Muskoka to designate five transitional care beds at Andy’s House in Port Carling for MAHC patients seeking end-of-life care in a homelike environment; and

Partnership with Hospice Muskoka

• launched SeamlessMD, a patient portal using an app, to provide remote support to a patient’s surgical journey using an interactive guide to prepare for their surgery beforehand and recover faster afterwards, all from the comfort of their own home.

We invested in mental health care through a new Mental Health Navigator who provides immediate support to patients in need in our Emergency Departments who are experiencing mental health crisis. 

Desiree Reisenburg, Mental Health Navigator

Understanding that culturally relevant care close to home in the communities we serve is important, we collaborated with the Barrie Area Native Advisory Circle to introduce Indigenous Patient Navigator services to patients at the South Muskoka site.

Mary Sue Robinet, Indigenous Patient Navigator

Clinical research also continues to be supported by MAHC with four additional studies approved in the past year.

Over the past year, we have onboarded six new Patient Experience Partners, growing our Patient and Family Advisory Council to 13 members with increasing participation in organizational and capital redevelopment committees, working groups and projects.

We hired 123 new staff to the health care team, and welcomed seven new associate staff to MAHC with two Emergency physicians, two midwives and three family medicine colleagues. We supported 72 medical learners over the course of the past year as part of their training to become physicians.

Having received a provincial announcement of operating funding for Muskoka’s very first MRI (Medical Resonance Imaging), we started the planning for Muskoka’s first MRI machine that will support our stroke centre and provide access to MRI closer to home for the entire region.

Keeping pace with advancements in technology and the need for new and replacement hospital equipment is directly supported by the outstanding work of our two Foundations, which collectively raised over $4 million over the past year through donor giving. Because of their dedicated efforts, we have a new anaesthesia machine and laparoscopic instruments for the operating room at the South Muskoka site, and a new nuclear medicine machine, an echocardiography machine, and a new digital X-Ray at the Huntsville site.

New Nuclear Medicine Suite at HDMH

New anaesthesia machine at SMMH

We have also been proceeding with long-range future planning for hospital redevelopment that would build a new site in Huntsville on the existing land at 100 Frank Miller Drive and a new site in Bracebridge on new land through a site selection process. Reimagining local hospital care with two new hospitals in Muskoka involves extensive engagement with our staff, physicians and volunteers, patients and families, and our community at large.

Health care in a community takes a team – many players working together from many departments and many agencies. All of this has been possible because of the guidance of the Board of Directors, the direction of the Leadership Team, and every staff member, physician, midwife and volunteer, as well as our Foundation partners working together with our community to support better health for everyone we serve. You can also see our Annual Report to Our Community for more!

Identifying a Preliminary Preferred Site for a Future SMMH

President & CEO Cheryl Harrison speaks at a community information session.

Our redevelopment project for two new sites continues to move along as we work through what the Ministry refers to as the ‘Functional Program’ or Stage 1.3 of its capital planning process for hospitals until the early part of 2024. This stage of planning has three components:

1. Program and service planning to meet our community’s future needs based on population projections, and considering future changes like expanded technology;  
2. Site selection for a new location for the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital (SMMH); and
3. The financing plan for the community’s local share of $225 million of the $967 redevelopment project.

Most recently, our greatest progress has been to evaluate various land options within the urban centre boundary of Bracebridge to identify a preliminary preferred site for a future SMMH Site. In Huntsville, the property at 100 Frank Miller Drive is large enough for us to build a new hospital on the existing land, so no site selection is necessary.

Having looked at more than 20 different properties identified through various consultations, five locations met the minimum land requirements to proceed to evaluation. The team evaluated the five properties against broad criteria for location and property, land use planning framework, and capital and servicing costs. Through our open houses and feedback survey, we were grateful to receive community input on our criteria by hearing what was most important to people when considering a future location. We heard from some that people a hospital should be located near downtown Bracebridge and the ability to access the property by means other than a vehicle, such as on foot or cycling should be part of the evaluation. We also heard that environmental impacts were key to consider as well. Environmental considerations have been part of the evaluation criteria from the beginning, but we have expanded the criteria to focus on protecting environmentally sensitive land and natural landscapes, such as avoiding clearcutting of trees and ensuring our new builds look and feel like Muskoka. Top of mind for many we have engaged with is also how future construction will minimize climate change impacts.

The evaluation exercise found that each property had strengths and challenges, and a scoring process helped to rank their suitability for a hospital. We have narrowed the five properties to three that are considered appropriate for a future hospital:

• 1975 Muskoka Beach Road across from Muskoka Brewery, (current preliminary preferred site);
• 300 Pine Street between Walmart and the fairgrounds; and
• Highway 118 West lands, located east of the Muskoka Hills retirement villa.

Our evaluation isn’t fully completed yet. We were pleased to revisit our communities again in April with a series of in-person and virtual information sessions to provide an update, take questions, and validate our findings to date. Thank you to everyone who attended, and if you weren’t able to join us you can watch one of the presentations here.

We are also having ongoing discussions with the Town of Bracebridge to further investigate the potential costs of the required municipal services for these three highest-ranked properties.

Over the next several weeks we will be further validating the 1975 Muskoka Beach Road property, which includes further due diligence such as geotechnical and hydrogeological studies, cost estimates, environmental assessment, and site plan preparation. We anticipate a final decision on the preferred site by the Board of Directors in the fall of 2023.