Ontario Medical Association

• Through this partnership, OntarioMD and CHIMA aim to elevate health data literacy for physicians and medical office assistants.
• This will be achieved through professional development initiatives and by promoting awareness and adoption of the Health Information Certified Associate (HICA) certification for frontline health information professionals.
• "Improved health data literacy in primary care leads to better care and improved patient outcomes.
• Advocating for the health information profession, CHIMA monitors industry trends, facilitates continuing education, creates networking opportunities, and connects its members with employment opportunities in the health care sector and beyond.

• The HRM Task Force has spent the past year evaluating solutions resulting in two reports.
• The recommendations from both reports were made to help doctors spend less time handling reports and allow more time for patient care.
• Reducing the volume of reports from hospitals to EMRs, and improving the searchability of reports, would go a long way to easing the burden of reviewing digital reports and ensuring patient safety is maintained.
• A handful of hospitals have already initiated work to reduce the number of digital and faxed reports going to doctors.

• On March 31, 2023 the Ford government in Ontario ended the expanded health-care funding it put in place when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.
• This funding allowed everyone in Ontario to access essential health care.

Insurance status

• These can include homelessness; mental health issues; addiction; having documents withheld by an abusive partner, landlord or employer; and, for a growing number of people who live and work across Canada, lack of legal immigration status.
• Increasingly, people may spend years with precarious immigration status, all the while building a life here and eagerly waiting for applications to come through.
• For example, a student applying for a work permit may fall out of status while one application expires and another comes through.

Refugees in all but name

• With increasing global health and economic disparities, we are seeing more people cross and/or stay within our borders to work and live.
• Like many others who work with these populations, I can say that many who do not have refugee status are refugees in all but name: escaping impossible conditions and trying to build a future here.
• For some people, this could mean deciding between rent, feeding their children or getting basic health care.

Inevitable emergencies

• It is inevitable that many people will not have access to prenatal care and will wind up in an emergency department, where the hospital will be ethically required to provide care anyway.
• Hospitals requiring advance payment does not make people less pregnant, less high-risk or less in need of a caesarean.
• It means people going without care and coming to the hospital in need of emergency surgery, which has the highest cost and risks of any birth.

Lessons learned

• If we have universal health coverage for all who live here, why did we need the program in the first place?
• Second, it demonstrated that it was not a massive burden to our health-care system to provide this care.
• Several decades ago, we decided as a country that everyone — rich or poor — deserves access to health care.
• This article was co-authored by Shezeen Suleman of Toronto Metropolitan University, and Rachel Spitzer, AJ Mata and Jenny Yang Klimis of University of Toronto.

• As CEO, Fredrickson is responsible for growing both Teachers Life, an 80-year-old Member-driven insurer, and its division nowly , a new digital-first and purpose-driven life insurance offering.
• Kayte has extensive experience in areas that are integral to the CEO role at Teachers Life, including insurance, innovation, and member services a background that will serve her well in her new role, said Lori Foote, chairman of the board of directors for Teachers Life.
• Fredrickson highlighted the importance of innovation and mission at Teachers Life and nowly, noting: Teachers Life has long been invested in closing the life insurance gap by making life insurance accessible and easy for underserved communities across Canada.
• nowly is a division of Teachers Life Insurance Society (Fraternal) Teachers Life.