Annual Report: 2018/2019

Message from the chair & the executive director

In 2012, in collaboration with provincial stakeholders, we deployed thehealthline.ca, the Ontario government’s comprehensive online resource that connects patients and caregivers directly to the services they need. Today it serves millions of Ontarians each year and enabling them to locate the most appropriate care at the right time.

Finding care can be challenging. We make it easier. With more than 47,000 services across Ontario, sorted into over 400 categories, described in plain language and capturing essential details (like opening hours and referral requirements), thehealthline.ca empowers patients and professionals to find services close to home.

Not only has this online resource saved patients time and enhanced their connection to health care, it has also saved money by collecting information once and sharing it broadly. A single, trusted and reliable resource frees health care organizations and providers from the need to maintain their own local service directories (with all the attendant costs of keeping data organized and current) and empowers them to focus on delivering, and planning, health care. And it has supported integration right across the health care sector by making the full range of services visible and helping providers make connections among each other.

This past year has seen significant change throughout the health care system. We worked hard to chart our course through that change and will continue to do so. Along the way, we continued to help people find the care they need, worked with both provincial and local organizations to leverage the directory to serve their specific communities and enhanced our systems by collaborating with provincial stakeholders to maintain data standards and information management processes.

In the coming year, we’ll continue to connect people to services, simplify system navigation and empower both health care providers and system planners. We look forward to playing our part in the transformation of Ontario’s health care system.

Michael Robbins, Executive Director
Glen Kearns, Board Chair

Performance

thehealthline.ca Platform

1	provincial database
14	regional websites
28	integrated specialty websites
72	community sub-regions
24,701	agency profiles
47,290	health and community services

Site Visits
8.4 Million
12% increase over 2016-2017

Pages Viewed
17.1 Million
5.4% increase over 2016-2017

Natural Language Searches
541,589
14.7% increase over 2016-2017

Specialty Resources Visits
338,982
23% increase over 2016-2017

Visits per Day
23,005
10.9% increase over 2016-2017

Mobile Users
48%
4% increase over 2016-2017

Services Viewed
9.8 Million
7.4% increase over 2016-2017

Most Popular

Walk-In Medical Clinics
Pharmacies
Long-Term Care Homes
Diagnostic Imaging Clinics
Medical Laboratories
Seniors' Apartments
Retirement Residences
Family Health Teams
In-Home Personal Support
Home Help and Homemaking

Crafting tools to empower system navigation

“One of the most important aspects of our job is connecting families to resources and services. thehealthline.ca is a really great tool that we use all the time to make those connections for families.”

- Community Connector Fox Hollow Family Centre

In addition to our core platform, thehealthline.ca, we build special-purpose web tools that support health and social services providers and that empower specific populations. Here are two we built this past year.

Connecting seniors to community services: Age-Friendly Sarnia-Lambton

Challenge:
Create a useful and usable information hub geared to seniors and their needs to enable them to fully participate in the community of Sarnia-Lambton.

Actions:
An extensive community engagement and discovery phase enabled us to understand both the needs and preferences of seniors. We co-designed the website, based on that input, integrating our service information and organizing it to align with the World Health Organization’s eight domains of age-friendly communities. We then supported marketing and promotion to ensure community awareness and take-up of this tool. To ensure equity, we designed and printed books to reach those with limited Internet access.

Results:
A citizen-centred website that presents relevant and current information in a senior-friendly way, thus making Sarnia-Lambton more accessible to seniors and supporting older people to remain healthy and included within their community.

Performance:
The site has seen more than 3,000 visits since launch.

www.agefriendlysarnialambton.ca

I don’t think our staff would be as nimble, communicative, efficient and connected without Healthchat.ca.
- Behavioural Supports Ontario

The team at thehealthline.ca has been phenomenal. Our expectations have been exceeded. It’s been a great relationship and we’ve been able to show innovation together in this joint collaboration.
- Age Friendly Sarnia-Lambton

Thehealthline.ca really understood what we were doing and were able to take our ideas and run with them.
- Assess & Restore

Thehealthline.ca has been invaluable to us in many ways. We have been successful in finding great candidates by posting job ads, our providers use the site to search for the best community resources for patients and the local healthcare news and events pages are always up to date.
- London Family Health Team

Connecting providers to services: GTA Rehab Network

Challenge:
Challenge: Help rehabilitation professionals in the Greater Toronto area by creating a tool to fit within their existing website that would augment the online resources available there and make their work more efficient.

Actions:
Through extensive information management, the relevant service records were organized in a way that made sense to rehab professionals and aligned with their work flow. This architecture was then used to build a tool that would blend with the existing website. Extensive user testing ensured that the functionality worked well and served provider needs.

Results:
The responsive web tool seamlessly integrates into the larger GTA Rehab Network website, complementing the other resources and creating an information hub to support rehab professionals in their work.

Performance:
The comprehensive resource has seen widespread acceptance by rehab professionals.

www.gtarehabfinder.ca

Looking ahead

Ontario is undergoing a far-reaching transformation. We’re seeing the creation of a new ‘super-agency’ – Ontario Health, and the introduction of accountable care principles through the emerging Ontario Health Teams (OHTs). In both cases, success will rely to a great degree on integration and information-sharing.

That’s why we’ve been engaging with government, working with partners, crafting solutions and raising our profile over the past year. We believe we have solutions to connect providers to providers, patients and caregivers to services and system planners to key data. And we’re eager to share them.

In the coming year we will support emerging OHTs with asset maps and guidance on system navigation. Where possible, we will help them create patient-facing and provider-facing digital tools to help drive integration and seamless access to care. Of course, we will continue to work with our valued partners including provider networks and Local Health Integration Networks to connect people to health care services. And we will build on our expertise in creating digital tools to support age-friendly communities across Ontario.

The year ahead promises to be exciting!