Ambulatory Care Review: Capital Health Authority

Capital Health Authority (CHA) is a leader of health care in Canada, serving a large area in northern Alberta (i.e., Region 10 of Alberta's regional health system). It is an organization of many distinct and unique components, and has strong linkages to the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

CHA undertook an ambitious regional review of hospital-based ambulatory care to guide ongoing decisions about the scope, organization delivery processes for high quality, innovative ambulatory care services and to provide the foundation for future planning for high quality patient care, teaching and research.

The review generated

• an ambulatory care framework including
  • directional statements, providing a vision for the future
  • the structure and infrastructure, or key elements, needed to successfully achieve the vision
  • decision criteria for consolidation, expansion or discontinuation of specific services
• an inventory of CHA's ambulatory care services
• ambulatory care activity projections by program and site and for the region, estimated to the years 2008/09 and 2013/14
• the current status, opportunities for achieving best practices and benchmarks, and recommendations for improvement for each program

• best practice/benchmarking literature review
• survey of teaching hospitals
• tours of the CHA sites
• a "future of ambulatory care" forum with a U.S. leader in ambulatory care

Value to Client

The Review recommendations will guide decisions on

• improving integration of ambulatory care services within a continuum of services
• establishing, consolidating, expanding or discontinuing specific ambulatory care services
• allocating appropriate resources for clinical, educational and research use
• incorporating "leading edge" technology in the delivery of services
• maximizing existing ambulatory care resources and increasing cost effectiveness through shifts to ambulatory care
• developing capacity to meet future service needs
• setting priorities to improve patient-focused care

Relevance to Other Planning

This project demonstrates our ability to successfully undertake "watershed" projects and our profound knowledge and expertise in ambulatory care planning.

The methodologies which involve an extensive number of stakeholders representing clinical, academic and research, and associate consultants would be available for other organizations. The best practices/benchmarking literature and survey of work can be translated to many settings, to broaden understanding of ambulatory care and applicability of "best practices".

Our work continues as part of the functional program team for CHA's new academic ambulatory care centre.

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