OMNI team to seek wider engagement

With Local Health Integration Networks (LHINS) now a reality, OMNI Health Care is developing an engagement team to work on networking with and become involved in the new LHINS, says OMNI CEO Fraser Wilson.

Chairing the engagement team will be Axiom News executive editor Peter Pula. OMNI, a long-term care provider, is a client of Axiom News.

Pula was chosen, based on his involvement with the Central East LHIN and genuine interest in seeing the LHINS succeed, Wilson says.

The OMNIway, the daily online news service provided by Axiom News, can support this wider engagement, Wilson says, “Engagement is what the news service has always been about,” he says.

The news service can let the whole OMNI organization know what is going on in the way of initiatives and challenges, Wilson says. “At the LHINS level, it can highlight initiatives in other places that might be replicated on our home turf.”

The development of 14 LHINS across Ontario is the provincial government’s effort to create a more integrated people-centred health care system that is responsive to local needs.

The LHINS will plan, integrate and fund local health services including hospitals, Community Care Access Centres, home care, long-term care, mental health, addiction and other community support services. OMNI has homes in four of the 14 LHINS.

The LHIN community engagement plan envisions establishing Collaboratives, advisory bodies of seven to 12 members in regions within each LHIN, to support and advise the LHIN on local, health system performance, strategic priority setting, planning and evaluation.

“Along with trying to get ourselves involved in the LHINS and the Collaboratives, we want to reach out to other sectors of health care such as hospitals to see how we might assist them and how they might assist us in integrating the system,” Wilson says.

“Through engagement we can get to know the strengths and challenges we all face in integrating the system.”