Speaker, good morning. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, aiming to promote screening and prevention. It is also an opportunity to raise awareness about the impact of breast cancer, celebrate the progress made and support those affected by it.

This past spring, a US health task force recommended women get screened for breast cancer 10 years earlier than the current mammogram recommendations, starting at 40 years old. Shortly after, I was pleased to hear the Minister of Health say that Ontario is currently exploring a similar change regarding breast cancer screening.

As a registered nurse, I have seen and heard stories from countless women about how deadly breast cancer is and how early screening can save lives and reduce the toll of this disease.

I recently met with a breast cancer survivor and advocate, Ellyn Robinson, who introduced me to a photo-essay campaign that brings together the images and voices of numerous Ontarians affected by breast cancer called I Want You to Know. It can be accessed at densebreastscanada.com.

In my own life, two survivors—my adopted grandma, Shirley Bray, and my francophone friend and leader, Melinda Chartrand—have also emphasized to me how beneficial early screening can be, how important self-examinations are on the first of every month to feel for lumps or bumps for women of all ages, and how we need to show up for screening and book mammograms, even if the truth is something that may terrify us.

To all the women who advocate for breast cancer screening and prevention, to the survivors and advocates, you are not alone. We see you. Thank you for your work.

Before I forget, I just wanted to take a moment. It’s October 16; this is my mother’s birthday. She passed away several years ago, but I know she’s with me here in spirit. I just want to take a moment to say that I’m thinking about her.

I wanted to thank the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, first of all, for her leadership in building a stronger and more connected and publicly funded health care system that is centred on the needs of patients. I’m very pleased to be rising today to speak about our Convenient Care at Home Act on behalf of the constituents of my riding of Eglinton–Lawrence and as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health.

Speaker, under the leadership of Premier Ford, our government has been making record investments in health care to improve health care delivery and connect every person in Ontario to care that is faster, easier and closer to home. Our government has increased the health care budget by over $16 billion—with a “b”—since 2018, an average of 6.1% per year since we have been elected.

We’ve focused on:

—expanding access to primary care providers, building and strengthening health care infrastructure and growing the health care workforce for today and for years to come;

—bringing down wait-times for services;

—reducing unnecessary emergency department visits, avoidable readmissions to hospitals and the rate of alternate level of care;

—improving access to mental health and addictions services, including for individuals in crisis;

—improving access to digital services;

—providing people with more connected and convenient care through local Ontario health teams; and

—delivering better coordinated care in the community and in the home, including improving transitions and wait times between hospital and home care.

We have heard loud and clear that Ontarians want better and faster access to home care services. The proposed Convenient Care at Home Act is another important milestone in providing the right care in the right place through better home and community care in our province, and in supporting Ontario health teams to deliver comprehensive, integrated care to patients, families and caregivers.

Ontario health teams are bringing together health care providers, including primary care, home care, long-term care and hospitals, to work together to ensure people can move between providers more easily with one patient record and one care plan that follows them wherever they go to receive care.

Speaker, Ontario has world-class health services provided by our incredibly skilled and dedicated health care workers, like my colleague from Mississauga Centre, MPP Kusendova, who is a registered nurse.

Our health care providers are an important part of our health care system. They are instrumental in supporting healthy and strong communities, and we sincerely appreciate everything they do in providing extraordinary care and support to every person in Ontario.

Unfortunately, for all concerned, over the past decades the province’s health care system has become fractured and disconnected. Patients, families, caregivers and providers have all repeatedly identified the same types of challenges and barriers. Our government has listened to them and continues to take bold action to transform our health care system by overcoming these challenges and barriers so that it’s focused on the needs of patients, families and caregivers, and so that it more effectively supports our health care workers.

A key part of building a patient-focused health care system was the creation of Ontario health teams, which the province introduced in 2019, and which will be further supported and enabled by the proposed Convenient Care at Home Act.

In 2019, our government brought forward a new legislative framework to support better health care. Through The People’s Health Care Act, a new statute was enacted—the Connecting Care Act—which established Ontario health teams as a new model of health care organization and funding and a model of integrated, population health-based care delivery, where health and community care providers work together as one team for their local population, even if they’re not in the same organization or physical location.

Since 2019, groups of health care providers and organizations across the province have come together to form these Ontario health teams in every region of the province. In December 2019, we announced the first cohort of 24 Ontario health teams that were created across the province. And in the following years, more teams have been established.

Betty-Lou Kristy, chair of the Minister of Health’s patient and family advisory council, has supported Ontario health team development within the Ministry of Health since her appointment and continues to play a key role in supporting Ontario health teams, along with the council. I want to thank her for her work.

There are currently 57 Ontario health teams in every corner of our province. And we are very, very close to the goal of full provincial coverage by Ontario health teams, ensuring that everyone in Ontario has the support of an Ontario health team. The Ministry of Health and Ontario Health continue to engage with providers in west Parry Sound so they can become an Ontario health team in the near future, building on their commitment and strong foundation to integrating and improving care in their community.

Ontario health teams have focused their initial efforts on improving health care experiences and health outcomes for their identified target patient population, such as advancing digital health and virtual care initiatives, enhancing the quality of home and community care for seniors and their caregivers, creating more seamless care pathways and making transitions between health care providers smoother for patients. Over time, Ontario health teams are expanding the services they provide, and they’re continuing to build towards integrated care for their entire attributed population.

At maturity, Ontario health teams will be held clinically and fiscally accountable for providing a full and coordinated continuum of care. Through Ontario health teams, patients will experience improved access to health services, including digital health and virtual care options; better coordination and transitions in care; and better communication and information from their health care providers.

As our government modernizes home and community care, and home care service gradually shifts under the auspices of Ontario health teams, patients will greatly benefit from these changes. Home care will be easier to find and navigate, and transitions from hospital to home will be more convenient and easier to understand, with home care plans for patients that they can hold, understand and follow. Because, as has been said before, the only thing better than having care close to home is having care in your home.

The Ontario health team model provides the opportunity for front-line health care professionals to expand on their great work and take the lead at doing what they know best: delivering excellent patient care. Ontario health teams are already well on their way to transforming how people access care in their communities, and there are many instances of health and community providers coming together to provide more connected and convenient patient-centred care, designing and implementing new integrated models that are responsive to the unique needs of the communities that they serve.

For example, the Algoma Ontario Health Team has established a community wellness bus, bringing primary health care to vulnerable communities, helping to provide easier access to health and social services, improve health outcomes and reduce gaps in mental health and addictions care. Between April 2022 and March 2023, the community wellness bus in Algoma had more than 5,000 visits.

Another example is the neighbourhood care team, which is closer to home, in my area. It was established within a seniors’ housing building by the North Toronto Ontario Health Team. The neighbourhood care team offers low-income seniors and tenants a range of health care services, including regular blood pressure checks, foot care, access to social workers, wellness checks and attachment to primary care.

The Middlesex London Ontario Health Team is connecting primary care providers to on-demand video or audio phone interpretation services to enable patients to receive care in the language they are most comfortable using.

Through their surgical transitions projects, the Noojmawing Sookatagaing Ontario Health Team has reduced 30-day emergency department visits by around 32%, and reduced length of stay by 48% for those recovering from surgery, allowing people to spend more time at home.

The Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team has a remote care monitoring program that has seen positive outcomes in supporting alternate-level-of-care patient discharges from the hospital back into a more appropriate setting in the community. And that program is now being spread to other Ontario health teams across the province, because we’re going to take the best of what we can find in these teams and spread those around, because we can learn from these things and everybody can benefit.

Ontario health teams are also exploring new partnerships with home care providers for more convenient and coordinated transition services. An early leader is the Southlake Regional Health Centre in my friend’s riding of Newmarket–Aurora, a member of the Southlake Community Ontario Health Team. Their geriatric alternate-level-of-care reduction program ensures that people who have completed a hospital stay in acute care are safely transitioned home, with a home-care plan in place before they leave.

A number of Ontario health teams are developing new models of integrated home care by participating in a home care leading projects initiative. For example, the Guelph Wellington Ontario Health Team will implement an integrated primary care team model that integrates home and community care support services coordinators into primary care teams to bridge information gaps, enhance care quality and ensure that home care providers are dedicated members of the patient’s care team. The Durham Ontario Health Team will implement a primary and community care hub model providing integrated and wraparound services for older adults through a central location, ensuring seamless transitions among services and incorporating a flexible support network with non-traditional providers to address diverse patient needs.

Ontario health teams are also enhancing home care and primary care services so that patients and families can get the care they need in their homes and communities: for example, the East Toronto Health Partners Ontario Health Team, which together with its primary care network has developed primary and community care response teams to support primary care providers in providing care to home-bound and vulnerable seniors with unmet health or social needs.

Ontario Health will be leading next steps in the assessment of these new models to inform their scale and spread to other Ontario health teams. As new models are replicated across the province, there will be tangible improvements to patient care and patient and family experience.

Speaker, the government continues to support and invest in Ontario health teams. When Ontario health teams were approved, each team was eligible to receive one-time funding, and the ministry has directly invested more than $118 million to support initial development, build capacity for collaboration and implement the Ontario health teams model.

The Ontario health teams are also playing a pivotal role in implementing our Digital First for Health Strategy. An integrated health care system requires strong digital capabilities at the front lines of clinical care. The Ministry of Health is working closely with Ontario health teams to support digital health adoption, including the development of digital standards for virtual patient visits, digital health information exchange, online appointment-booking and patient portals, while enabling Ontario health teams to also implement digital solutions in a way that meets their local needs. Supporting digital health and Ontario health teams is giving front-line providers better access to the tools and information they need to meet the needs of their patient populations and empowering patients with choices in how they can access health care.

More than $124 million has been allocated to support Ontario health teams and other health service providers in providing digital and virtual care options so that people in Ontario can easily connect with a health care worker from the comfort of their own home. This includes remote care monitoring, online appointment-booking, among other advances. More than 760 approved digital and virtual care projects have benefited over 4.2 million patients, and successful digital projects that provide a significant impact on health care delivery are being considered for further funding to spread and scale initiatives to other Ontario health teams, eventually, across the province.

The province also continues to develop operational and policy supports for Ontario health teams. This includes a coordinated network of supports that assists Ontario health teams at all stages of their development and implementation with guidance tools, webinars, best practices and other approaches, delivered by partners with expertise and experience in the delivery of integrated care.

About a year ago, the province also provided updated direction to further ensure Ontario health teams are built to last and positioned to deliver better patient care. The Path Forward guidance focused on establishing a common, not-for-profit corporation for the purposes of managing and coordinating an Ontario health team’s activities, standardizing the groups involved in the Ontario health teams’ decision-making, addressing operational capacity and support and communications and implementing common integrated clinical pathways to help teams deliver proactive, evidence-based care for patients with specific conditions. The province continues to engage with Ontario health teams on the implementation of this guidance and the supports required to advance these priorities.

Recently, our government invested $43 million to bolster Ontario health teams, to support their ongoing work to break down long-standing barriers between different parts of our system, to ensure that people experience connected care from their providers and help patients navigate local services, to improve access to preventive care and to advance innovative care solutions across hospitals, primary care, home and community care and other sectors, to improve patient experiences, health outcomes and well-being.

To support all teams in coordinating care for their local communities and prepare home care transitions, an initial group of 12 Ontario health teams from all areas of the province has been selected. They will lead the work to accelerate the delivery of home care and share lessons with all teams. The 12 teams include:

—All Nation Health Partners, serving Kenora and Sioux Lookout;

—Burlington Ontario Health Team, serving Burlington and surrounding areas;

—Couchiching Ontario Health Team, serving Orillia;

—Durham Ontario Health Team, serving Durham;

—East Toronto Health Partners, serving east Toronto;

—Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, serving Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, obviously, including Kingston and surrounding areas;

—Greater Hamilton Health Network Ontario Health Team, serving Hamilton;

—Middlesex London Ontario Health Team, serving Middlesex and London;

—Mississauga Ontario Health Team;

—Nipissing Wellness Ontario Health Team;

—Noojmawing Sookatagaing Ontario Health Team, serving the city and district of Thunder Bay; and

—North York Toronto Health Partners Ontario Health Team, serving North York, Thornhill and Marhkam.

With support from the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health, these teams will focus on connecting primary care, hospitals, and home and community care for patients with chronic diseases like chronic heart disease and diabetes, so that the experience is seamless and we avoid unnecessary visits to hospitals and emergency departments. These teams will look at how to expand 24/7 patient navigation solutions for local health services as part of Health811.

It’s very encouraging to see how the Ontario health teams are continuing to innovate and build partnerships, with the ongoing support of the Ministry of Health. I look forward to what they will accomplish next, particularly as they continue to take on a greater role, and I’m really excited about the primary care and home care part of this.

The Ontario government is building on the work that has already been done to connect people to home and community care through Your Health. Over time, these changes are going to build a more connected and convenient model, focused on patients and delivering the best care. That’s what this government is focused on.