WHAT IS CORIGQI?

CORIGQI stands for COVID-19 pandemic Response and Impact Group for Quality Improvement. The grant for this project is funded by the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada and Canadian Medical Association Foundation.

The grant award invites creation of short-term innovations with the capacity to maximize the effectiveness of care for patients while guarding the safety of health workers and to generate rapid and measurable benefits to patient community in Canada.

In the largest single outbreak in Canada, over 1000 workers & 600 households tested positive for COVID-19 at a meatpacking plant located in the town of High River, Alberta. Low socio-ethno-economic status of the employee population along with language barriers & precarious immigration status exacerbated the outbreak.

This necessitated an intervention via the rapid integration of Primary Care Networks (PCN) & Community Social Support Agencies (Enhanced COVID-19 Integrated Pathway) to safeguard this vulnerable population. This short-term innovation helped in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 outbreak with 98% avoiding acute care and fewer than 6 deaths.

CORIGQI aims to evaluate the innovative tested concept to identify what worked well, what could be improved on and explore the possibility of incremental change in primary care delivery.

CORIGQI PURPOSE

How Might We improve on the existing Enhanced Care Pathway to catalyze a culture of collaboration among primary care and social support agencies in order to effectively address healthcare inequities faced by low socio-ethno-economic population?

CORIGQI VISION

Looking beyond the pandemic, creation of a scaleable primary care service providing safe, timely and equitable socio-clinical care that would improve the healthcare experience of low socio-ethno-economic patient community

CORIGQI SCOPE

CORIGQI EVALUATION of THE PATHWAY

The Pathway was designed to:

1. Improve the data flow of COVID +ve results from Alberta Provincial Labs to the Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to the family physicians;

2. Enable physicians to provide standardized virtual care to their patients at home with the aim of reducing acute care impact;

3. Identify social risk factors (inability to isolate, lack of caregiver support, food and financial insecurity, health literacy & system navigation)and facilitate connections to the appropriate Community Social Support Agencies.

Outcomes:

The situational collaboration between PCNs and CSAs contributed to addressing the social risk factors and clinical care in a timely manner. The number of hospitalizations in the High River Emergency Department was only 9. The percentage of patients managed virtually using the COVID-19 Primary Care Pathway was 98 percent reducing workload and risk of exposure to staff in ED/hospital.

CORIGQI evaluation:

The Pathway necessitated collaboration between PCNs and CSAs to address the immediate needs of the target low socio-ethno-economic population. To build and evolve on the existing innovation beyond the pandemic, the project team will look to understand Pathway-specific challenges.

WHERE WE ARE TODAY.....