You Have Transformed Home Care Services to Benefit Patients and Staff

Your generosity has directly contributed to transformative improvements in home care services. Because of your support, Victoria Hospital Foundation recently partnered with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority on a groundbreaking initiative to enhance care for home care clients and create greater efficiencies for staff.

Over the past year, all community direct service staff in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority received smart phones. These phones were then outfitted with Procura Mobile, an innovative app designed to support scheduling and documentation.

This new technology has had a tremendous effect:

• Real-time scheduling changes, ensuring better coordination of care.
• Automated mileage tracking for efficiency and cost-savings.
• Text messaging and email on their mobile devices to keep staff connected and informed.
• Improved safety measures for staff working alone through an online check-in system.
• Less paperwork, reducing administrative burdens and environmental waste.

Your donations have made a positive impact throughout the entire healthcare system, including here at Victoria Hospital. Many Victoria Hospital patients rely on home care services and, thanks to your support, hospital stays have decreased. Discharges are now happening about a half day or a full day earlier because of you. At Victoria Hospital alone, there has been a 24.8% improvement.

“Timely communication between the office and staff has always been our problem,” said Luba Bereza, Director of Centralized Home Care Operations for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. “We were playing phone tag back and forth. There can be anywhere from six to 10 Health Care Aides who need to be notified on a client discharge. Now, we just update it on a computer and it’s instantly on their phone.”

The project has also contributed to a savings of over $33,000 in costs related to paper use in its first year alone.

Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has the largest home care workforce in Manitoba, with over 2,200 staff conducting approximately 16,000 visits per day.  

“What this app allows us to do is have one source of truth for communication,” said Bereza. “If I’m working in the field and there is a change made to the tasks I need to do for a particular client, that change happens instantaneously. Those simple details make a huge difference in how we deliver service.”

An example of such a change would be to reassign the primary contact for a client. In a family with multiple siblings, often one sibling is the primary contact for home care. If that sibling is out of town, the process for reassigning the primary contact to a different sibling is now seamless.

Staff can also now receive region-wide email notices and join virtual meetings like safety huddles.

“Just making them feel a little bit more like they are part of a team has been important,” said Bereza.

The feedback from staff has been overwhelmingly positive. For Matthew Jacobi, a certified healthcare aide with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, the app has made a big difference.

“It has been quite user friendly and helpful all around,” said Jacobi. “The security risk of leaving a piece of paper laying around isn’t there anymore.”

Jacobi says the app is also making a positive impact on client care.

“It takes just a second to make sure we are getting all tasks completed,” said Jacobi. “Before there was a greater chance of missing a particular task. Now you are going in and checking off each task as you go.”

This project’s success is being evaluated as the new standard across Manitoba. And none of this would have been possible without you.

Beyond this project, your donations have also helped fund Victoria Lifeline medical alert technology. Thanks to your generosity, over 200 home care clients deemed at high risk of falls received this critical technology at no cost for up to one year.

Your support of these two initiatives increased home care capacity and reduced the risk of falls, which makes a positive impact on hospitals like Victoria Hospital. These investments also support the transition from hospital to home and reduce the overall need for hospital visits. By investing in these initiatives, you are not only enhancing healthcare for individuals in our community but also strengthening the entire healthcare system. Thank you for making this impact possible!