A new advance care planning initiative is aimed at improving end of life care for Waterloo Wellington residents.
The process facilitates critical conversations about end of life care between residents, their families and health service providers.
Last year the Waterloo Wellington Local Healthcare Integration Network (LHIN) approved a $1.2 million three year investment to ensure residents have greater access to information about advance care planning and to increase the quality of palliative care.
Last year, an extensive community engagement process found the biggest barrier to end of life conversations was access to information.
Since then, over 12,000 pieces of resource material have been distributed to local residents and health service providers.
Now, about 85% of Waterloo Wellington Patients are able to pass away in the place of their choice, which is up 8% in a year.
“People wait to talk about end-of-life care until it’s too late. By encouraging these conversations to happen earlier, we can vastly improve the end-of-life experience. Thanks to the engagement and resources developed by ACPWW, more residents and providers are aware of the benefits of an ACP and more of these crucial conversations are taking place.”says the CEO of the Waterloo Wellington LHIN, Bruce Lauckner.
“Our local LHIN has dared to be different in supporting this project. This ACP project is unique in the province in its approach to engagement of both our residents and our health care providers and in its commitment to resident involvement in making their own health care decisions through Advance Care Planning.” adds Sheli O’Connor, the program lead at Advance Care Planning Waterloo Wellington.
