Completion Date: December 31, 2022

Project Contact: April Bonise

The aim of the Admission and Discharge Communication Project was to improve and strengthen communication between hospital-based physicians and family physicians in the community of Surrey-North Delta.

During the 18-months of this project, the team worked through communication processes with hospital-based physicians and family physicians with the goal to strengthen and improve the relationship between primary care and hospital-based physicians, in order to streamline the transition of care for patients and prevent hospital re-admission.

To achieve these goals, the working group undertook five different activities:

1. They completed a communication workflow assessment and gap analysis. 57 areas for improvement were identified and these informed the rest of the project activities.
2. They included Emergency Medicine physicians for the Fraser Valley on the RACE app as a means of both improving communication between family physicians and Emergency physicians but also as a means of reducing the number of inappropriate referrals to the ER.
3. They revised the FP to ER referral form in order to streamline the information being sent to the Emergency Room physician.
4. They improved MRP Identification by adding mandatory text fields onto Meditech.
5. They hosted a physician-to-physician engagement event to enhance relationships among FPs and hospital-based physicians with an aim of restoring trust, improving communication, and starting a cultural shift towards positive relationship-building between these two groups.