Health: 1) What the Pink Zone at RVH is all about heading into cold and flu season; 2) Liberals launch pandemic preparedness agency, seeking faster vaccine development; 3) People with diabetes in lower-income areas at higher risk for amputations: report
1) What the Pink Zone at RVH is all about heading into cold and flu season
Courtesy Barrie360.com and News Release
By Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre
Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre’s (RVH) Emergency Department (ED) is well prepared to serve the community ahead of this year’s respiratory season with its Minor Ailment Patient Pathway (MAPP) booking portal.
Pioneered here at RVH, the ED MAPP was designed to help decrease wait times and overcrowding by rerouting non-acute patients with cold, flu and other respiratory symptoms, along with minor limb injuries, lacerations, urinary tract infections and skin infections, out of the main ED into a designated treatment area called the Pink Zone. People presenting with any of these symptoms are encouraged to use the booking portal to determine eligibility and book a same or next-day arrival time.
“The ED MAPP enables us to provide improved access to care in our community, which is especially important during cold and flu respiratory season,” says Dr. Christopher Zanette, RVH Chief of Emergency Medicine. “We know for some, the ED is their only access point to a healthcare. We want to ensure that we are able to streamline our patients in the most efficient way possible to improve their care and experience.”
Since its successful launch in 2023, just over 5,000 patients have been seen and treated through the ED MAPP in the Pink Zone location. For most patients, the average time between being seen by the doctor and leaving the health centre is approximately 1.5 hours.
“Staying up to date on vaccinations will help to keep everyone healthy this respiratory season,” says Sharon Ramagnano, RVH Operations Director, Emergency, Critical Care and Trauma. “If you do become sick and your symptoms require a higher level of care, please follow-up with your healthcare provider, access walk-in clinics within the area, or use our ED MAPP patient online booking system.”
RVH reminds residents to stay home when sick, wash your hands often, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and clean high touch surfaces regularly to help keep everyone healthy.
Patients can book same- and next-day arrival times Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The ED MAPP booking link can be found on the RVH website (rvh.on.ca) under Emergency Department or click here.
2) Liberals launch pandemic preparedness agency, seeking faster vaccine development
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Canadian Press Staff, September 25, 2024
The federal Liberals are creating a new agency to beef up Canada’s ability to handle rapidly spreading infectious diseases and protect from future pandemics.
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the agency is meant to preserve the “top-gun team” of public servants that helped steer Canadians through COVID-19.
Health Emergency Readiness Canada is tasked with boosting Canada’s life-sciences sector and ensuring Canadians get faster access to vaccines, medical therapies and diagnostics by accelerating the transition from research to commercialization.
“The danger would have been (that) if we don’t have a permanent agency sitting somewhere, that collective knowledge that we have accumulated during COVID would even be dispersed eventually, perhaps even lost within the civil service,” Champagne told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’re pulling them together in a team so that when people are talking about health, emergency readiness, they know where to knock.”
The new agency will be based in the Industry Department but include staff from the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. Champagne said it requires no new legislation and is based on spending Parliament already approved through this year’s budget.
“We want to keep a very close nexus with industry,” Champagne said.
The agency will co-ordinate efforts between Canadian industry and academic researchers and with international partners.
This follows a similar move by the European Union to create an agency in 2021 that not only tries to prepare the continent for pandemics but seeks to learn from mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canada was not adequately prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic with an outdated and understocked emergency stockpile, and a virtually non-existent vaccine production industry.
Last year, the British Medical Journal called out Canada’s “major pandemic failures” such as jurisdictional wrangling and a high death rate in long-term care homes.
Yet the Trudeau government has resisted calls from medical experts and the NDP to follow countries like the U.K. in conducting an inquiry into how governments handled the COVID-19 pandemic and how they could better manage a future pandemic.
When asked about an inquiry, Champagne said the announcement is focused on having the right materials and researchers on hand when needed.
“We all hope that there be no other pandemic. But the responsible thing to do is to make sure that you have the team stand by and ready,” he said.
Champagne told a biotechnology industry gathering on Friday that officials found Canada was not ready in co-ordinating “health emergency readiness” when peers started looking into preparing for future events.
“We realized that things were scattered,” he said.
He said Canada faced the danger of being the only G7 country “without a dedicated team” for pandemic preparedness.
Once fully operational, the agency will have an “industrial game plan” to move quickly on research and industrial mobilization if another health emergency like a pandemic is declared.
Champagne said the pandemic and investments in personalized medicine have made the public enthusiastic about the biotechnology sector.
“If there is one industry that I think Canadians have fallen in love again with, it’s certainly that industry,” he said.
ews
Published September 26, 2024
3) People with diabetes in lower-income areas at higher risk for amputations: report
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Canadian Press Staff
A treatment room in the emergency department at Peter Lougheed hospital is pictured in, Calgary, Alta., Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. The Canadian Institute for Health Information says more than 7,000 people with diabetes have a leg, foot or toe amputation every year and the majority of them could have been prevented. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says more than 7,000 people with diabetes undergo a leg, foot, or toe amputation every year — and the majority of those procedures could have been prevented.
The report issued today says people with diabetes living in the lowest-income neighbourhoods are three times more likely to have an amputation than those living in the highest-income communities.
It also says people with diabetes living in remote communities are at higher risk of leg amputations than those living in urban centres.
Erin Pichora, CIHI’s program lead for population health, says lack of access to a primary-care provider to help people manage diabetes is one likely factor behind the inequalities.
She says disparities are also likely in access to specialists who can treat diabetic wounds on people’s feet — including podiatrists and chiropodists — before they worsen.
Diabetes Canada says the report shows the importance of ensuring people with diabetes have equitable access to the care and resources they need.
“People living with diabetes who undergo amputations face significant emotional and financial distress,” Laura O’Driscoll, senior manager of policy at Diabetes Canada, said in an emailed statement to The Canadian Press.
“We need to ensure that everyone with diabetes has affordable, timely access to the medications, devices, education, and care needed to manage their condition and prevent complications like amputation.”
The CIHI researchers reviewed hospital records from across Canada for fiscal years 2020-2021 and 2022-2023 and found about 7,720 “lower limb” amputations associated with diabetes per year among people 18 and older.
Each year there were about 3,080 hospitalizations for “above-ankle” leg amputations and 4,640 hospitalizations for “ankle-and-below” amputations, including feet and toes.
Patricia is the Business Mentor and owner of Grow Vantage and a Past President of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. She applies over 30 years of business experience (from start-up to corporate) to mentor entrepreneurs. Since 2011, she has held over 6,500 coaching and training sessions in-person and online. Through Ask For Directions Training, her entrepreneurial training program (and parent company Grow Vantage), and as a business coach, she works with start-ups who are new (or who have lost traction) to design, launch and grow their businesses. Along with 20 other expert instructors she teaches strategies in marketing, sales, communications, and finance, as well as practical techniques to increase productivity, and manage their businesses. In other words, everything entrepreneurs need to learn to grow and run their businesses successfully, and avoid the costly mistakes they can't even see coming - that lead to delays in growth and getting stuck.
- Lucky symbols and superstitions from around the world - March 18, 2025
- How much sleep do you really need? Experts say it depends - March 17, 2025
- End of federal tax holiday in February expected to lift inflation: economists - March 16, 2025