LHIN seeking your input

North East LHIN
News Release

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The North East LHIN has launched a regionwide engagement approach to seek input and to help determine local health care priorities. Engage 2009 will use a variety of ways to seek people’s input, from all corners of North East Ontario in setting priorities that are reflective of our region’s local health care needs.

Engage 2009 includes an on-line forum on the NE LHIN website where citizens, patients and health care professionals can engage in a discussion with fellow citizens as well as provide their comments to the North East LHIN using the internet. In addition, the NE LHIN will be holding engagement sessions over the next few months which may include: meetings with individual stakeholders, meetings with the general public, open houses, town hall meetings, focus groups, surveys, blogs, pod casts and more.

Engage 2009 will be active until September 30, 2009. More details and opportunities to participate will be forthcoming and posted to www.nelhin.on.ca/engage2009 as they become available.

QUOTES

NE LHIN CEO Remy Beaudoin says, “I am pleased to launch Engage 2009. Health care is a community issue and it requires a community approach. The word local in Local Health Integration Network means ensuring our health care priorities reflect the needs of the people who live here. We are very much looking forward to hearing from citizens, patients and professionals on how the NE LHIN can best address the priorities of North East Ontario residents in the years ahead.”

Mathilde Gravelle Bazinet, Chair of the NE LHIN notes that the end-result of Engage 2009 must be a strategic plan that reflects our community’s needs and wants. “The North East LHIN can only determine our region’s health care priorities by being committed to actively listen and engage in what people have to say. There is strength in numbers when we try to address the long-standing health care issues of our region such as the high number of alternate level of care patients in hospital beds, the long waits in emergency departments and the high number of people suffering from chronic disease, such as diabetes. I
look forward to discussing these important issues and others with citizens of our region.”

QUICK FACTS

 Engage 2009 involves a refresh of the NE LHIN’s first strategic plan entitled the Integrated Health
Service Plan (IHSP).

 The first IHSP was published in December, 2006. It was a three-year plan. The current IHSP refresh
will reflect priorities from 2010 to 2013.

 The North East LHIN has a population of approximately 560,000 people with culturally and socially diverse backgrounds who are spread out over a largely remote and rural 400,000 square kilometres.

 Local Health Integration Networks were created to work with the local citizens and the provincial government to transform the Ontario health care system.

 The legislation, Local Health System Integration Act, 2006 (LHSIA) outlines the expectations for a transformed health care system in Ontario. This transformed system requires well thought-out community engagement and system-wide planning activities.

LEARN MORE

Visit: www.nelhin.on.ca/engage2009

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