Level of care hierarchy

We use the concept of a level of care hierarchy in the context of Transfer Delays. See Transfer Delay to understand how it is used. Level of care applies to a patient's combination of Boarding Loc item and comment entry (which together define a physical location). Which location has which level of care is stored in the s_level_of_care table.

Levels of Care

• The list of levels of care from highest to lowest are:
  • WRHA ICU, same level of care includes: MICU, SICU, CICU, ACCU, CCU (also for PACU or OR)
  • Other MB RHA ICU or Other Province ICU
  • WRHA IICU
  • WRHA HOB Medicine ward (examples: HSC_HOBS, STB_IMCU as of 2020-10)
  • WRHA regular Medicine ward (CTU or NTU)
  • WRHA non-Medicine (e.g. surgery, family med, OB, etc) AND lower acuity ward in acute care hospital, whatever flavour of the month word they use for this, incl. rehab, geri-rehab, palliative care unit, etc

Today (April 29) in TASK it was mentioned transfers to surgical units are not considered transfers to a lower level of care. In the above statement "WRHA non-Medicine" category whereby the units listed are considered lower levels of care than regular medicine units surgery is included. I suggest transfers to cardiology units are also not transfers to a lower level of care. Does the level of care hierarchy need to be reviewed and updated? (Pam) Flagged for Task meeting Ttenbergen 11:14, 2021 May 6 (CDT)

• SMW

• Cargo

• Categories

**Ward outside WRHA

• • PCH or home
• Regarding the level of care of the ED
  • The ED is unique in this regard as it can take on various different levels of care
  • When the patient’s care is taken over in ED (either Medicine or ICU) and then the patient goes to Medicine or ICU --> consider the time in ED as being the SAME level of care as where the person goes to (i.e. Medicine or ICU).
  • In the unusual circumstance that Medicine ward team takes over care while the patient is still in the ED, but before going to a Medicine ward the decision is made to send the person to a level of care lower than Medicine wards (e.g. home, back to PCH, etc) then consider the time in ED as being that of a Medicine ward.

When to use the Levels of Care

When the intent is to move the patient from a higher level of care to a lower level of care, transfer ready date and time has to be entered corresponding to the physical location where the decision was made. The entries are done following the guidelines in the Boarding Loc and Transfer Ready DtTm tmp entry.

Actual listing of care levels for different Boarding Locs

The s_level_of_care table in CCMDB.accdb (and automatically linked into CFE contains a mapping of our Boarding Locs to their level of care.