Province Announces New Ontario Health Team in Windsor-Essex
The provincial government is partnering with Ontario Health to create a new Ontario Health Team in Windsor-Essex and providing up to $1.1 million to help it “seamlessly integrate health care services for patients and support the region’s continued response to COVID-19”
The Windsor Essex Ontario Health Team “will break down barriers in patients’ health care journeys to ensure they receive better and faster care that meets their unique needs” and help ensure underserved communities “have equitable, culturally appropriate and safe access to preventative care, chronic disease management, and mental health and addictions services,” said the province in a release.
The announcement was heralded by Essex-Windsor EMS Chief Bruce Krauter and Claudia den Boer, Executive Lead for Community Mental Health at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, who served as co-chairs of the Windsor-Essex OHT Steering Committee.
“The approval of our OHT is a strong endorsement for the tremendous teamwork and collaboration already underway,” they said in a joint statement. “It will be serving our temporary foreign worker community, those living in high risk vulnerable communities such as shelters or those struggling with mental health, substance use challenges and other advancing chronic conditions like COPD. We look forward to building on these successes and improving the integration of care focused on the wellbeing of the Windsor Essex community.”
Ontario Health Teams are part of a new approach that brings together health care providers as one collaborative team to better coordinate care and share resources, and have been able to quickly and effectively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new Windsor Essex Ontario Health Team is composed of over 45 local health care programs and service providers, including hospitals, primary care and community support providers, mental health and addictions agencies, long-term care and other social service providers. With the addition of this new team, the province will have a total of 51 Ontario Health Teams, which cover 95 per cent of the province's population.