Breast Cancers Between Mammograms Rise as Threat - NYTimes.com (research Ontario Breast Cancer Screening Program)

"....Scientists know that both missed tumors and interval cancers tend to be larger and more advanced than tumors detected at regular screenings. Now a new study reports that interval cancers are more aggressive than missed tumors......

OHA - Quality and Patient Safety Governence Toolit (eg family/patient experiences to the board level) eg. patient stories

Note: language/implementation issues

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The following templates provide self-assessment tools, leading practices and key considerations for the board to draw upon when engaging patients and families.
4.1 Framework and Principles for Patient and Family Engagement4.2 Declaration of Values4.3 Bringing Patient Experiences to the Board4.4 Patient Relations Self-Assessment Tool for Organizations
Click here to download all Section 4 templates.

May 2 blog: (privacy-Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act - FIPPA) Ontario Hospital Association - The Facts on FOI and Hospitals' Quality of Care Records

Note: the facts from the perspective of the OHA; references patient safety, communication, data sharing
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The Facts on FOI and Hospitals' Quality of Care Records

"I’m going to use today’s blog to address an issue that has recently generated a great deal of controversy: whether Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) should be amended to protect a specific, narrow and well-defined class of information created by hospitals for the purposes of quality improvement.

Schedule 15 of Bill 173, Better Tomorrow for Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2011, proposes to exempt, from the FIPPA, “information provided to, or records prepared by, a hospital committee for the purpose of assessing or evaluating the quality of health care and directly related programs and services provided by the hospital.” Bill 173 is currently being considered by the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs (SCFEA). This proposed amendment would align Ontario with other jurisdictions in Canada, as well as the United Kingdom and Australia, with respect to the treatment of quality of care information.

Without this kind of protection documented, conversations that health care professionals regularly have about enhancing patient care, as well as documents developed relating to quality, safety, and risk management, may be subject to public disclosure. This would have a chilling effect on the willingness of hospital staff to identify or comment on patient care and quality issues.

To read our submission to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs respecting this amendment to FIPPA, click here.

Ontario hospitals unequivocally support openness and transparency; they also support continuous quality improvement. They are keen to strike an appropriate balance between improving care and improving access to information.

The proposed amendment has been criticized by organizations that either do not fully understand its purpose, or are deliberately trying to mislead the public. This has caused confusion about why these protections are necessary, which is incredibly unfortunate.

For me, the fundamental question is, do patients want to be treated in hospitals where issues of quality and safety are examined and discussed by hospital staff on a daily basis, or in ones where they are not? If the answer to the question is “yes, safety and quality matter,” then it is critical to support this amendment. The OHA does, and so do individuals like patient safety expert Dr. Ross Baker from the University or Toronto, as do organizations like the Ontario Medical Association.

We have created a special webpage to explain the truth about the amendment, why it is necessary, and why we support it. You can access it at www.oha.com/thetruth. I encourage you to visit it to learn more."

Tom Closson

(OHA)

My Sister's Voice (Canada) Lunafest - April 30th

For more information, visit us at lunafest.org

TICKET INFORMATION:
mysistersvoice@rogers.com
PHONE 905.666.3010

Test Results Management (Canadian Patient Safety/College of Physicians & Surgeons Ontario)

OWHN: Echo: Women's Health Leadership Program Ontario - retreat/training application note deadline dates

Women's Health Leadership Program

Upcoming Women's Health Leadership 101 Retreats:

 Retreat Date: March 7 - 9, 2011 ~ Application Deadline: January 26, 2011

 Retreat Date: March 23 - 25, 2011 ~ 
Application Deadline: February 2, 2011

The Ontario Women's Health Network (OWHN) is currently accepting
applications for the upcoming Women's Health Leadership 101 training
retreats scheduled for March 7-9, 2011 and March 23-25, 2011,
respectively, at the Nottawasaga Inn in Alliston. Women's Health
Leadership 101 is the first of three graduated training levels that
make up the Women's Health Leadership Program. This is an ongoing
program and further upcoming retreat dates and information will be
announced in the near future.

The program, funded by Echo: Improving Women's Health in Ontario,
seeks to amplify women's voices in the development of health policy,
research and services.

Women's Health Leadership 101 addresses leadership and sex and
gender based analysis in the context of women's health and health
systems in a participatory and supportive environment. It explores
women's own sense of leadership and application of skills, while
enhancing their leadership skills and community networks.

This program is designed for women who are motivated and
interested in women's health issues and who are already actively
engaged in their communities. The program seeks to recruit women
who are committed to being active in women's health issues in their
communities following the retreat.

More information about the program as well as the application package
is available on the OWHN website at: http://www.owhn.on.ca/Women%27s_Health_Leadership.htm

Women who are interested in applying to participate in the Women's
Health Leadership Program should complete application and return
it to OWHN by the appropriate application deadline date (shown above).

We welcome you to share this email widely.

Please do not hesitate to contact OWHN with questions about the
program or application process.

OWHN: 416-408-4840 or toll-free 1-877-860-4545
email: owhn@owhn.on.ca.

Correspondence/Response: Patient Information and Decision Aids in Oncology: Need for Communication Between Patients and Physicians — JCO

1):    
Correspondence (Vodermark):
"In their recent contribution to Journal of Clinical Oncology, Brace et al¹ report on the knowledge and opinions of physicians caring for patients with cancer in the province of Ontario, Canada, about patient decision aids......Brace et al¹ must be congratulated for collecting this comprehensive data set on the oncologists' perspective on this important topic. However, it is possible that the rates of decision aid use by patients may actually be higher than suggested by the percentages for physicians responding to the questionnaire. Access to disease-specific patient decision aids is provided freely on the Internet, and patients may make use of these tools without discussing them with their treating oncologists..."cont'd

2):


Response to Vodermark (Erin D. Kennedy): 
We appreciate the comments by Vordermark¹ about our recent contribution to Journal of Clinical Oncology.²
"...We agree that the Internet certainly has the potential to be an excellent and accessible information resource for both patients and physicians. The results presented by Vordermark et al³ and Adler et al⁴ are both interesting and timely, given that these data suggest that patients seeking information on the Internet are not comfortable discussing the information with their physicians. This is similar to our own group's experience in which patients seem to be increasingly more confident in the information they find on the Internet rather than in their own physicians. This is somewhat concerning, and we must begin to question whether we as physicians are slowly losing the ability to connect with our patients.......To accomplish this, researchers need to involve (not avoid) physicians in both the development and implementation of pDAs and decision support tools. " 

Audio/Video Insights, Implications, Questions, Answers: Report of the Investigators of Surgical and Pathology Issues at Three Essex County Hospitals

Note: this audio/video (62 minutes) refers to the investigation into this year's media reports concerning unnecessary mastectomies/pathology issues and national public exposure of the issue; quality of surgical and pathology care in Windsor/Essex counties (Ontario); notes co-operative investigation (patients??...still listening - terms of reference....)

Recruiting: Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography (PET/CT) for the Diagnosis of Recurrent Cancer: a Feasibility Study - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov (PETREC)

Ontario Clinical Oncology Group (OCOG)

Condition	Intervention
Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Breast Cancer Head and Neck Cancer Ovarian Cancer Esophageal Cancer Lymphoma	Other: PET/CT scan

PET Scans Ontario - Cancer Care Ontario

Voreloxin - Sunesis Announces Data From Phase 2 Clinical Program of Voreloxin in Acute Myeloid Leukemia Support Phase 3 Trial in Relapsed or Refractory Patients - plus Ovarian Cancer

"Responses to single agent voreloxin observed in women with ovarian cancer for whom multiple prior therapies have failed, including some for whom both platinum-based chemotherapy and Doxil(R) had failed, are promising," said Hal Hirte (medical oncologist), M.D., Associate Professor, McMaster University, Department of Oncology and Chief of Oncology, Juravinski Cancer Centre at Hamilton Health Sciences (Ontario, Canada) and an investigator for the Phase 2 clinical trial. "These data warrant further investigation of voreloxin in this vastly underserved patient population, both in this later stage, salvage setting and in earlier lines of therapy."

abstract: Gynecologic Oncology : End of life care for women with gynecologic cancers Ontario, Canada

OHA - Calendar of Event Details (Toronto) Redefining Patient Centred Care: What Does It Really Mean?

Ontario Hospital Association conference June 17th conference agenda

The quality of the operative report for women with ovarian cancer in Ontario.

The quality of the operative report for women with...[J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2006] - PubMed Result: "

All: 1

Review: 0
[Click to change filter selection through My NCBI.]


1: J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2006 Oct;28(10):892-7."

Review:
J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2006 Oct;28(10):892-7.

The quality of the operative report for women with ovarian cancer in Ontario.
Elit L, Bondy S, Chen Z, Law C, Paszat L.

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the quality of the operative reports from cases of ovarian cancer surgery in Ontario.

METHODS: We undertook a population cohort study including all newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients treated initially with surgery from January 1996 to December 1998 in Ontario (n = 1341). We abstracted charts from hospitals and cancer centres. All surgical and pathology notes were abstracted into an ACCESS database.

RESULTS: A total of 1,341 women had surgery as the first step in management of ovarian cancer. A vertical abdominal incision was used in 87.6% of these cases. Peritoneal cytology was obtained in 87.8% of cases overall, but in only 69.5% of stage 1 cases. A description of the ovaries was provided in 85% of reports, of the uterus in 70%, the diaphragm in 53%, the liver in 69%, the pelvic lymph nodes in 10%, and the para-aortic lymph nodes in 41%. In stage 1 cases, the ovaries were assessed histologically in 89% of cases, the uterus in 80%, the omentum in 69%, the peritoneum in 20%, the appendix in 9%, the pelvic lymph nodes in 10%, and the para-aortic lymph nodes in 7%. Frozen section was obtained in half of the stage 1 cases, and the false negative rate for identifying malignancy was 6%. In all, 23% of women received adequate surgical staging for stage 1 disease, and 12% of women with advanced disease had optimal debulking (to less than 1 cm residual disease). There are clear differences between centres with a gynaecologic oncologist on staff and other centres in the adequacy of surgical staging in women with stage 1 disease (chi2 = 60.6, P < 0.0001) and in optimal debulking for advanced disease (chi2 = 39.1, P < 0.0001). In 40% of cases with advanced disease, the amount of residual disease following surgery is not reported.

CONCLUSION: The current approach of dictating operative notes does not provide sufficient detail in a large number of cases; this affects treatment decisions and limits our ability to assess quality indicators for operative care in ovarian cancer. This problem is pervasive but is more significant in centres without a gynaecologic oncologist.