Better Partnerships Create Better Care - Lessons from Southlake@home
Partnerships extend our reach and expand our ability to make an impact. Our partners help us to accelerate and deepen our learning in new spaces, and they keep us on track ensuring that the work is relevant and necessary to the teams we are working with.
Working with the team behind Southlake@home has put the importance of partnerships in even sharper relief. This home care program has attracted attention across the province because of its success integrating care for high need patients and reducing ALC days. It is fast becoming a model for other OHTs and hospitals exploring bundled community care opportunities.
Health Commons collaborated with Southlake to capture and share their recipe for success, with an easy to use Guide that captures the what, why, and how behind the team’s experiences in their first year of operation.
What We Learned
“We wanted to fundamentally REWIRE how we work together with our partners”
Southlake knew that a ‘One Team’ commitment from partners was one of the essential components of an @home model. Patients needed to see hospital, community support and homecare providers as a single team, and that meant creating a culture of mutual trust and shared accountability.
How Southlake accomplished this is not only a good lesson in launching new integration programs, it’s a good lesson for all partnerships. These are three of our biggest takeaways:
1. Design the experience
Taking the time to understand and plan for what patients are actually experiencing is what @home is all about. There are no standard eligibility criteria or rigid care plans. Instead, every partner has a role to play in creating the experience of the transition home and meeting the day-to-day care needs of every individual.
Takeaway: Partnerships often get weighed down in the ‘what’ and lose sight of the ‘why’. Shifting focus away from task-based models allowed Southlake’s homecare partners to work at their full scope of practice to provide comprehensive care, one person at a time.
2. Build in regular routines for innovation and problem solving
Southlake@home used iterative design principles to move farther, faster. Rather than taking the time to create the perfect set of tools and processes up front, they got started and learned as they went. They used daily team huddles with partners to hold each other accountable, share wins, and solve problems.
Takeaway: High touch solutions need high touch partnerships. Team rounding (the practice of checking in with all partners, giving each one equal airtime) and ongoing dialogue keep the momentum going and make it easier to adapt and learn.
3. Focus relentlessly on outcomes
Southlake@home measures key indicators at each step of the patient journey and has a comprehensive performance framework that includes regular surveys of patients and provider care teams. Clear performance expectations and regular reporting help a partnership coalesce around shared values and set a tone of transparency and joint accountability.
Takeaway: Good data makes good partnerships. Data strengthens relationships and equips partners with critical feedback to adjust and grow the program.
See our other partnership projects or get in touch to work together.
Thinking of pursuing an @home model? Get in touch with Southlake and check out the full Southlake@home guide. The guide offers a step-by-step approach to design, plan and launch an @home program that includes tools, templates and examples to get started.