Manitoba's Top Employers

17 HOW A 20 YEAR CRUSADE TO PREVENT ILLNESS HELPED CREATE A TOP WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT A community hospital's 20-year crusade to prevent chronic disease has also created a culture of innovation and purpose that is attracting and retaining high performing healthcare professionals. I n the 1990s Seven Oaks General Hospital in the northwest corner of Winnipeg wanted to do more to prevent chronic disease and to help patients manage their own chronic disease with lifestyle change. The Wellness Institute, an 80,000 square-foot medical fitness facility attached to and integrated with Seven Oaks General Hospital opened its doors Oct. 17, 1996. That experiment has helped a generation of children to get the right start for an active and healthy life and a generation of older adults to stay active and independent and out of hospital. That has obvious benefits for their quality of life, but also benefits for the public and the health system that suggest Wellness can do even more over the next 20 years. Over the last 20 years there were 6 million visits to Wellness Institute, a lot of them repeat visits by a strong core of 6,500-7,000 members, but also many patients participating in shorter term specialty programs for people with serious illness. Almost 500 patients per year who have had a heart attack learn to change their lifestyle which means that over the last 20 years 8,000 additional heart attacks have been prevented. Health education programs to help people learn to cope with specific conditions reached 48,000 people, and 8500 people have learned to manage their Type 2 diabetes with a focus on diet and exercise in order to avoid common complications such as heart and kidney disease. A comparatively smaller number of patients with chronic lung disease, about 60 per year, participate in Pulmonary Rehabilitation. They see a huge personal benefit in their own quality of life, but the program also prevents emergency visits and hospital admissions costing $5,000 per patient per year. That's a projected $6 million in healthcare costs avoided over the next 20 years without any expansion in the program. This is just a snapshot of the results possible by supporting active and healthy aging as a social goal and purpose, but it also points to the opportunity to see medical fitness as a strategy for reducing the overall burden of disease and healthcare costs. Integration at Seven Oaks goes both ways with Wellness on a mission to help people stay better and out of hospital, but also helping the hospital to keep its own employees healthy and safe. Wellness and injury prevention programs are a core strategy for workplace health that has made Seven Oaks a Top 100 Employer in Canada three times and a perennial Top Employer in Manitoba. Operating Wellness Institute as a successful, self-sustaining non-profit business has earned the hospital a reputation as a leader in medical fitness internationally leading to international consulting and training contracts in China that are helping Seven Oaks make a difference globally as well as diversifying its business to sustain the operation in Winnipeg. As Wellness Institute begins its third decade of innovation, Seven Oaks Hospital is charging ahead again with yet more innovation in patient care and treatment by addressing the chronic diseases that are responsible for a majority of hospital admissions and death in Canada. The Seven Oaks Hospital Chronic Disease Innovation Centre (CDIC) is Manitoba's newest research institute. It's dedicated to medical research and healthcare innovation to prevent chronic disease and is working on screening methods and technology for earlier and better identification, cost- effective and improved treatment models to keep more patients with chronic disease healthy in their own homes. Wellness and CDIC have drawn younger people with a different kind of expertise, in fitness, wellness, data science, epidemiology and healthcare economics that are now part of the caring community at Seven Oaks General Hospital. The opportunity to make a difference has always attracted dedicated people to work in healthcare. At Seven Oaks General Hospital the additional sense of purpose from working for an organization working to change the way healthcare is delivered has amplified employee engagement and the workplace culture. Deliberate dedicated strategies, research and constant evaluation, is driving that engagement by staff who understand the value to patients and to their own job satisfaction in constant improvement for patient safety and quality, but also a constant contribution to improve the workplace for themselves and co-workers that has made their workplace one of Manitoba's Top Employers again for 2017. You can find out more about how innovation at Seven Oaks Hospital is changing the way healthcare is delivered in an online video, just released this month, at sogh.ca. More about the Wellness Institute is available at wellnessinstitute.ca. For CDIC see changinghealthcaredelivery.ca. ❚ Operating Wellness Institute as a successful, self-sustaining non- profit business has earned the hospital a reputation as a leader in medical fitness internationally leading to international consulting and training contracts in China that are helping Seven Oaks make a difference globally as well as diversifying its business to sustain the operation in Winnipeg.

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