Tear Down the Silos in Health Care

  

She said the report’s “balanced approach” addresses more than simply medical issues and takes steps towards better co-operation between agencies.

Sidsworth said social agencies, including those addressing mental health, domestic violence and addictions, tend to “work in silos” without enough interaction.

 - The Belleville Intelligencer

What we need is a broad revamping of the system that makes the parts work better together, so that the whole is greater than — or at the very least equal to — the sum of the parts.

   - The Drummond Report

Everyone, every health service provider, teacher, politician and stakeholder I have spoken to wants the same thing – an integrated system that fully serves the needs of Ontarians.  This isn’t a pipe dream; in fact, it’s completely realizable based on the tools we have available, right now.  The only piece that’s missing is our willingness to give a bit of control to support something larger than ourselves.

It’s time to break down the silos in our social service system, especially in health care.  As a society, we simply can no longer afford not to.

UPDATE: We have deficient diagnosis of special needs in our schools; these are people who the suffer a great risk of falling through the cracks of society, producing less, consuming more costly back-end health services and potentially ending tangled up with the justice system.  Our police and corrections officers are not equipped to deal with mental illness, because the how to has never been seen as important enough to rate significant comprehension and training. 

So, we are reminded of the atrocities still happening in our correctional institutions that are caused by a lack of coordination, training and support. You have upset teachers and disgruntled doctors each saying all they want is the ability to provide the best service to their patients/students and cries from all levels for systematic, structural change to the way services are organized and collaborated on.

What we need now is leadership.  We need someone who's willing to take the risk of putting the Public Good before personal interest, be it politics, profit or power.  None of those things matter when our silo-based institutions are cracking from the internal pressure of their own inefficiency.

Everyone keeps telling me there is only one way forward - if we believe that, it's time to start working together.