Toronto Region Primary Care Workforce Planning Toolkit:

The Toronto Region Primary Care Workforce Planning Toolkit is a fit-for-purpose toolkit to support integrated primary care workforce planning in the Toronto Region. The toolkit is the result of a collaboration between the Health Analytics team at Ontario Health Toronto and consultants from the Canadian Health Workforce Network. A partnership with the City of Toronto, as well as extensive consultation with stakeholders, decision-makers, leaders, and frontline workers in Toronto, informed the development of the toolkit.
 
The toolkit provides a body of evidence around the current (and projected future) states of population health needs and primary care service provision at a neighbourhood level within the City of Toronto. The goal of the toolkit is to support evidence-based decision-making, particularly with regards to deployment of the primary care workforce and other health system resources. The toolkit looks at population needs and workforce capacity at the neighbourhood, sub-region, and whole city levels. It takes into account variations in population needs, workforce service capacity, and existing assets, and also addresses challenges specific to Toronto, such as patient mobility, anticipated rapid population growth, and physician retirement.
 
This toolkit will help providers, planners, stakeholders, and Ontario Health Teams:
 
• Understand more about the patients they are serving, where they come from, and their primary care needs;
 
• Estimate the primary care resources (MDs, NPs, allied health professions) needed for their patients;
 
• Identify future emerging needs that could be addressed by OHTs, taking into account population growth, demographic shifts, provider retirement, and changing practice patterns; and
 
• Inform strategies to transform care by testing a range of relevant scenarios.

Ontario COVID-19 Heterogeneity Project:

Inequities in the burden of COVID-19 observed across Canada suggest individuals in a community may experience different rates of infection (i.e., heterogeneity within community transmission).

The Ontario COVID-19 Heterogeneity Project examines the trajectory and development of the COVID-19 epidemic through measures of mobility (i.e. movement of people at certain times); through socioeconomic determinants of health (e.g. household income) and transmission-related structural factors (e.g. household size, working onsite in essential services); and by geography (i.e., locations in Ontario such as neighbourhoods). When examined, these measures show us that COVID-19 has affected Ontario communities, urban and rural, in different and in many cases, unequal ways.

To understand the unequal burden that COVID-19 has had on communities in Ontario, the COVID-19 Heterogeneity Project Team created a number of interactive tools that provide real-time data on the impact of COVID-19 on communities and those that live in them:
• Mobility Changes in Ontario - Mobility Tool
 
• Concentration of COVID-19 cases by Socioeconomic and Structural Factors and Geography in the Greater Toronto Area Tool

Toronto Health Status Indicators:

Population Health Status Indicator (PHSI) Dashboard: The PHSI dashboard is an interactive data visualization tool that provides highlights and key information on population health status indicators for the City of Toronto. These surveillance indicators were developed by Toronto Public Health (TPH) to help to meet the requirements of the Ontario Public Health Standards and to support TPH's mission to reduce health inequities and improve the health of Torontonians.

The dashboards will be refreshed with additional indicators and new data as they become available.

Ontario Marginalization Index (ON-Marg):

The Ontario Marginalization Index (ON-Marg) can be used to understand inequalities in health and other social problems related to health among either population groups or geographic areas across Ontario.

ON-Marg combines a wide range of area-level census indicators into four distinct dimensions of marginalization in Ontario:


• Material Resources (previously called ‘Material Deprivation’): Includes indicators such as % unemployment and % without a high school degree.
 
• Households and Dwellings (previously called 'Residential Instability’): Includes indicators such as % living alone and % dwellings not owned.
 
• Age and Labour Force (previously called ‘Dependency’): Includes indicators such as % seniors and % not participating in the labour force.
 
• Racialized and Newcomer Populations (previously called ‘Ethnic Concentration’): Includes indicators such as % recent immigrants (last 5 yrs).

Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg):

The Canadian Marginalization Index (CAN-Marg) can be used to understand inequalities in health and other social problems related to health among either population groups or geographic areas across Canada.

CAN-Marg combines a wide range of area-level census indicators into four distinct dimensions of marginalization in urban and rural Canada:
• Households and dwellings (previously called 'Residential instability'): Includes indicators such as % living alone and % dwellings not owned.
• Material resources (previously called 'Material deprivation'): Includes indicators such as % unemployment and % without a high school degree.
• Age and labour force (previously called 'Dependency'): Includes indicators such as % seniors and % not participating in the labour force.
• Immigration and visible minority (previously called 'Ethnic concentration'): Includes indicators such as % recent immigrants and % who self-identify as a 'visible minority' (defined by Statistics Canada).

Ontario Primary Care Need, Service Use, Providers and Teams, and Gaps in Care 2015/16:

Increased attention has been focused on primary care in recent years as a key strategy for health systems to achieve the "triple aim" of improving population health and patient experience at reasonable cost. Reforms to primary care in Ontario, Canada over the past decade and a half have included formal patient enrolment, blended capitation which has become the most common physician payment model, and the implementation of inter-professional teams.

Mapping Neighbourhoods:

A FIELD GUIDE FOR CREATING TOOLS TO ANALYZE NEIGHBOURHOOD-LEVEL DATA
Over the past year, HEALTH COMMONS SOLUTIONS LAB has been working in communities across Ontario to fast-track the development of neighbourhood geographies.

Making the best use of health care resources involves planning that is informed by data.
Local-level data can tell you about the characteristics of a community, what shapes health care utilization, and where the biggest opportunities exist for improving health.