Over the past year, Mount Sinai Hospital has taken an active role in implementing its strategy of Broadening Health Community Collaborations. Our community advisory committee, made up of representatives from community support and CCAC, immigrant and settlement, housing and homelessness, seniors and rehab sectors, have been very active in advising the hospital on a variety of strategic and community development initiatives. Consistent with the priorities articulated by the Toronto Central LHIN, our committee has worked to identify priority populations for the Hospital, particularly marginalized groups such as the homeless, new immigrants and seniors.

Over the past year, we have actively engaged community input in the development of our health equity and strategic plans as well as a new corporate partnership policy framework.  With guidance from our community partners, Mount Sinai Hospital has taken the lead in developing a balanced scorecard for community integration, the first of its kind ever developed in the health care sector.

Mount Sinai Hospital, in collaboration with over 100 community partners, has been active in planning and implementing a broad array of community-based initiatives that address social determinants of health and barriers to access, consistent with population health needs. Some include:

• The Building Breast Healthy Neighborhoods Project, a partnership between Sinai’s Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre and The South Riverdale Community Health Centre, targets low income or homeless women living in the South Riverdale area who lack breast health awareness and education and who need assistance in navigating the healthcare system.

• The Koffler Centre also recently partnered on The Gateways to Cancer Screening Project which examines women with physical mobility disabilities who have faced significant barriers in accessing cancer screening. The Gateways project engaged women with physical mobility disabilities to come forward, describe their experiences with cancer screening and propose recommendations to facilitate positive change.

• Mount Sinai was one of the first hospitals to implement the Client Access to Integrated Services and Information (CAISI) Project which enables the electronic sharing of client information between providers, including hospitals and shelters, to allow for better integration of care for homeless clients.

• Consistent with our focus on seniors and the provincial Aging At Home strategy, we have partnered with community support agencies and the Toronto CCAC to become a pilot site for a recent LHIN-funded “Home at Last” project which will facilitate discharge for older patients by providing them with personal care and community supports in order to ease their transition from hospital to home. 

• Mount Sinai also provides hearing and eye screening in the community to seniors from immigrant communities in partnership with Scadding Court Community Centre.

• With generous support from our donors, Joel and Jill Reitman, the hospital is now developing an Alzheimer’s Training and Support Program which will provide practical skills for families and caregivers so that they can better support their loved ones living with dementia and enable seniors to age at home as long as possible.

• Our mental health programs continue to expand their reach into the community by capacity building. Through the provision of psychiatric consultations to agencies such as Jewish Family and Child, Metro Mothers’ Network, South Riverdale Perinatal Network, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT) and AIDS service organizations (ASOs) the hospital provides training, education and support for staff working directly with difficult-to-serve populations.

• The Department of Psychiatry continues to reach out to immigrants and newcomers by offering culturally competent programs and services, in partnership with Hong Fook Mental Health Association, such as its Ethnocultural Assertive Community Treatment Team which received the OHA Award for Leading Best Practices in 2007 as well as an ethnocultural mental health court support program. There is also a geriatric wellness program serving the Chinese community in partnership with Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care.

• Mount Sinai Hospital has also been an active partner in the Mental Health and Addiction ER Alliance to improve and streamline mental health and addiction service delivery across the Toronto Central LHIN Hospital Emergency Departments.

• The hospital also continues to anticipate the need for physical expansion of its community-based programming. Over the past year we have worked closely with our partners in the Jewish Community as well as UJA Federation to expand our primary care services by planning for a second Family Health Team site at the Lebovic Jewish Community in Vaughan, slated to open in 2010.