Our Plan to Deliver a Bright Future for Healthcare Team Members

Weekly Update: April 4, 2024

For this week’s update, Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) is excited to share how the great provincial and local investment in healthcare including new hospital builds will significantly enhance the quality of work life for all team members.  Here we are explaining some important dimensions the community may not know about.

Key Highlights:

• Increased Point of Service Staffing: The hospital’s redevelopment anticipates adding at least 200 frontline team members across both sites, predominantly unionized positions, reflecting our commitment to robust patient care and staff support.
• Growth Areas: For the new builds, we're seeing substantial growth in specialty areas, including emergency services, critical care, and ambulatory surgery, necessitating an increase in specialized healthcare professionals to meet our community's needs.
• Specialization Opportunities: Our new approach encourages specialization, allowing nurses and other team members to focus on areas they are passionate about, such as specialized geriatrics care, rehabilitation, and stroke care, which will enhance job satisfaction and career fulfilment.
• Advanced Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Level 3: The inclusion of a Level 3 ICU presents opportunities for professional growth and development as staff engage with more complex care requirements. It will enable staff to work at the top of their professional scopes of training.
• Pride in the Workplace: Drawing from experiences across the province, we anticipate a significant boost in workplace pride following the opening of our modern and bright facilities, designed with quality of care and staff preferences in mind.
• Addressing Nursing Vacancies: With over 50 nursing positions currently open, our new model not only aims to fill these gaps but to attract additional nursing talent to our community, strengthening our healthcare delivery.
• Recruitment: All of these improvements will make our region more attractive to potential recruits to our healthcare teams.

What’s Next:

• Staff Engagement: We're launching targeted engagement work with our MAHC healthcare team members to explore how to maximize the new facilities' potential as the best places to work.
• Continuous Improvement: Following our fruitful physician engagement sessions, we are going to be communicating material changes to the model early next week that addresses concerns we heard.  We will then continue further engaging our physician colleagues.
• Internal and external engagement activities will be occurring over the next three months.

"As someone who began her career as a nurse and has always been driven by the desire to improve the work life of every team member in the health system, I'm profoundly committed to this journey.  We’re not just building new facilities; we’re crafting environments where our staff can thrive, feel proud, and continue to provide the exceptional care our community deserves.  This is an exciting time for MAHC, and I'm eager to see how, together, we can make these new models a beacon of healthcare excellence and workplace satisfaction."

Stay tuned for more updates as we work collaboratively towards a transformative healthcare future for Muskoka.  We encourage all community members to sign up at www.mahc.ca/stayinformed to receive these updates directly.