PROGRAM BACKGROUND
HISTORY
The Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis (H&K OA) Surgical Program was first established in 2004 and today includes 13 hospitals and 11 central intake clinics, who provide high quality of care and services for arthroplasty patients. The program is organized with a Working Group and Clinical Committee to drive all continuous improvement projects. The Working Group is a multi-disciplinary and multi-site team providing community and acute care for patients with operable osteoarthritis in hip or knee joints. They guide, continuously improve and implement the standardized clinical practices, protocols, scopes of care and services for Albertan hip and knee arthroplasty, using the Hip & Knee Surgical Care Path and direction of the clinical committee as guidance.
The Clinical Committee is comprised of Alberta’s top orthopedic surgeons, who provide an independent, expert review to the medical and quality improvement work of the Working Group. They make clinical and quality measurement decisions, using evidence and informed clinical judgement to set the standard of the best possible quality of care for the patients.
The success of the H&K OA Surgical Program is attributed to the continuous measurement of key performance indicators, as outlined in the Hip & Knee Measurement Framework. This framework, built around the six dimensions of health care quality, analyzes aggregated data from all health care sites and zones to provide a meaningful evaluation of the continuum of care against provincial benchmarks. Performance indicators include wait times, patient outcomes and health complications, which are then used by the network of health care providers to inform continuous quality improvement activities. The Albertan Hip & Knee Measurement Framework can be found here.
GOVERNANCE
Surgical Working Group
Lead: Danika Tribo
The Surgical Working Group aims to guide, continuously improve and, where appropriate, implement the standardization of clinical practices, protocols, scopes of care, and services for hip and knee arthroplasty in Alberta, using the H&K Surgical Care Path and direction from the Replacement Clinical Committee as guidance.
Replacement Clinical Committee
Chair: Dr. Tim Pearce
The Replacement Clinical Committee aims to make clinical and quality measurement decisions for the surgical branch of the H&K OA Program, using evidence and informed clinical judgement to set the standard of the best possible quality of care for the patients.