Give people a named contact.
Before discharge, provide the destination service, how to contact it, the responsible transition role and the next step in writing.
03 / THE POLICY ASK
Someone owns it.
Until the handoff
is confirmed.
A bounded hospital pilot. A named administrative role. A process that can be checked, measured and improved.
PILOT STATUS / NOVEMBER 9
CAMH identified the recipient.
The Patient and Family Experience Office said the proposal went to the Clinical Director for General Outpatient and Integrated Mental Health. The pilot decision and decision date remain open. The office asked that further questions go through Patient and Family Experience.
Read the CAMH reply ↗FIVE REQUIREMENTS
What a real handoff
should include.
Clinical decisions stay with clinicians. The proposed role owns coordination and escalation.
Confirm the referral was received.
Track receipt and acceptance separately. Test a two business day administrative acknowledgement target. This is a proposed pilot target, not an existing entitlement.
Test timely clinician follow up.
For a defined pilot group, test a scheduled appointment within 7 days, with clinician approved exceptions and an escalation route if capacity is unavailable. Use the major depression standard as a benchmark, while clarifying its scope.
Keep responsibility when plans break.
Keep an administrative owner when a referral is rejected, contact fails or a short course ends before the next provider accepts the person.
Make the results visible.
Publish monthly aggregate results: accepted referrals, completed follow ups, unresolved waits and 30 day ER revisits. Report time to actual treatment separately from intake.
THE PATH TO CHANGE
Start small.
Make it measurable.
A plan for testing accountability before wider adoption. No hospital has committed to this pilot in the campaign record.
One hospital.
One clear group.
Agree on eligibility, partner services, the coordinating role and clinician approved escalation.
Track every
handoff.
Measure receipt, acceptance, follow up and what happens when a referral fails.
Publish.
Learn. Improve.
Share aggregate results and ask Ontario Health to consider wider adoption if the process works.
WHAT COUNTS AS AN ANSWER
A role.
A process.
A decision date.
A substantive answer identifies the responsible role, explains how referrals are acknowledged and accepted, and describes what happens when the next service declines.
It also responds to the pilot proposal and gives a dated next decision. Another contact route alone does not resolve the question.
CONNECTED POLICY WORK / NOVEMBER 3
A funding referral
that did not fit the need.
The recap says MCCSS described $84 per month for routine dog care, no special ODSP acquisition funding and a referral to the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides.
Read the ministry reply summary ↗The foundation replied that it does not provide dogs for psychiatric needs and pointed to an external directory. The campaign is asking MCCSS for a direct funding and benefit redesign answer.
Read the foundation reply summary ↗Descriptions and amounts are attributed to the dated correspondence recap. Eligibility rules and the status of any benefit redesign require a direct policy answer.
ONE QUESTION. A BETTER STANDARD.
Make it your
question, too.
Ask your elected representative who stays accountable until follow up care accepts the person.
Build your letter