FE Activities (Current)

The Facility Engagement Initiative is intended to strengthen the relationships and engagement between VJH medical staff and Interior Health Authority leadership.

To support this, the VJH Physician Society was created in 2016. Its Executive and VJHPS Working Group are tasked with finding ways to:

• Improve communication and relationships among the medical staff, so their views are more effectively represented.
• Prioritize issues that significantly affect physicians and patient care.
• Support medical staff contributions to the development and achievement of health authority plans and initiatives that directly affect physicians.
• Have meaningful interactions between the medical staff and health authority leaders, including physicians in formal HA medical leadership roles.  

With these goals in mind, the following activities have been created and VJH medical staff are encouraged to participate where they have an interest or area of expertise.

Please contact the VJHPS Project Manager to discuss your interest in any of the activities listed below.

To view Facility Engagement activities happening across BC, click to access the searchable online SEAT (Site Engagement Activity Tracker) Database.

Advancing Comprehensive Care of the Arthroplasty Patient			Many factors contribute to the care of arthroplasty patients, delivered by a variety of medical as well as paramedical professionals. Problems, however, are encountered when such efforts are not coordinated between these groups from the outset. This activity aims to develop comprehensive and consistent patient information documents that follows the patient from initial consultation through post-operative recovery and beyond, involving input from community and hospital clinical staff.
Allied Health Education		All Departments	To engage and reimburse medical staff (physicians, midwives) in teacher roles, to provide education for allied health professionals and physicians,where no funding for such activity currently exists. Maximum allowable hours per participant = 20. Completion of the Activity Report form is required.
Centralized Booking for General Surgery (Hernia and Gallbladder)		Surgery	Pilot study to reduce wait times for inguinal and umbilical hernia and gallbladder surgery by booking patients on O.R. slate to first available surgeon AFTER consultation. This is an alternative to “centralized referral” processes.  Activity expanded to include gallbladder surgery as of February 2020.
Departmental/Interdepartmental Enrichment Meetings		All Departments	Reimbursement for attending meetings that enhance communication, planning, reviewing, prioritizing, and improving patient and family-centered care and the physicians’ work environment. Click here for full guidelines and the DIEM online form (meeting organizer must complete the DIEM online form noting participants and summarizing outcome of meeting within one month of event.)
Feasibility of Day Care Surgery at Pleasant Valley Health Centre		General Surgery	Determine the feasibility of doing day care surgery at PVHC and if possible help develop criteria for appropriate patients for that venue.
Fine Wire Localization		Multiple Departments	Meetings of physicians from family medicine, diagnostic imaging, surgery and pathology departments to better understand breast lesion treatments.
Inter-Society Facility Engagement Sessional Reimbursement		All Departments	Reimbursing VJH physicians to attend other engagement Societies’ activities to build relationships, enhance learning, and improve patient care.
Internal Medicine Perioperative Optimization Clinic		Internal Medicine	Interdisciplinary development of a clinic that formalizes an ad hoc referral pathway to access Internal Medicine assessment, risk reduction, and optimization for complex surgical patients (parallel clinic accompanying the existing Pre-Anesthetic Assessment Clinic conducted by the Department of Anesthesia at VJH).
M & M Catering Reimbursement		All Departments	Reimbursement for catering during M&M Committee meetings. Max $30/person. Expense receipt must be submitted along with record of attendance. Physicians cannot be reimbursed for attendance as M&M rounds are a requirement to maintain hospital privileges.
Physician Lounge Refurbishment		All Departments	Financial support for improving physician areas within the VJH to improve the physicians’ working environment.
Physician Recruitment		All Departments	Reimbursement for recruitment activities that support engagement with prospective candidates, in the form of site visits, facility tours, community tours and social engagement. A maximum of 8 hours of physician sessional time per candidate visit is reimbursable. Expenses not already paid or reimbursed by IH may be claimed up to a maximum of $1000 per candidate site visit (receipts required).
Physician Surgical Assist Working Group		Surgery	Collaborating with physician assists, surgical colleagues and hospital administration to consider a more formal structure for the provision of surgical assist services at VJH to provide a safe, well-staffed, comprehensive and skilled surgical assist services and a collective voice for the physicians who staff this service.
Protecting the Rights of Involuntary Patients under the Mental Health Act			Involuntary admission of patients with mental health disorders presents inherent and profound curtailment of individual rights with significant risks to patients and medico-legal risk to physicians and the Health Authority. The successful outcome and implementation of this project will translate into a sustainable education and monitoring framework that will ensure the protection of individual patient rights, physician, staff and organizational risk to ensure compliance with newly implemented standards in BC.
Reducing Redundant Lab testing		All Departments	To investigate through data collection if there is evidence to suggester whether redundant laboratory testing is a significant problem.
Resuscitation & Simulations (SIMS)		All Departments	Reimburse physicians for conducting and attending simulations. Click here for full guidelines and SIMS online form which must be completed for reimbursement.
Uncharted / Missed Documents from VJH to Community MDs Review		All Departments	Research to determine the extent of VJH electronic and paper format documents (labs, X-rays, reports) being lost or sent in error to community MDs or in some cases to the wrong MDs, and/or wrong locations.
Uncompensated Committee Work		All Departments	Reimburse sessional time for physician attendance on IH quality committees. These committees are requested by IH but not part of the requirements to maintain hospital privileges. Click to read full guidelines.
Virtual Office Initiative		All Departments	Given the outbreak of the CoVid-19 virus, and the requirement for social distancing to contain and mitigate the transmission of the virus, physicians may require the establishment of virtual office solutions to meet the needs of their patients. Objective of the activity is to investigate and research virtual office solutions and provide information back to physicians so that they can use that information and determine what solution will work best in their individual practices.
VJH Surgery/Hospitalist Co-Management of Elderly Surgical Patients		Surgery, Hospitalists	Researching the options and mechanisms to institute automatic hospitalist consultation for the purposes of comanagement of specific surgical patient populations. This will include defining which patients will trigger automatic comanagement, determining a compensation model, development of a mechanism to inform hospitalist of the request for comanagement and outlining roles and responsibilities for surgeons and hospitalists in comanagement.