Networking

Horizontal Networking

Horizontal networking involves connecting with similar rural hospitals and practice sites. This enables us to grow as a system and to partner together in initiatives that tackle similar challenges that we all face. For example, quality improvement initiatives can be spread to different sites so that the benefits are available across the network. The number of participants consequentially increases to improve the power of the study for publication.

We believe horizontal partnering to be a win-win-win situation. For other organizations it means access to WDMH’s proven quality improvement and patient safety resources and materials, so other hospitals don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when developing quality improvement initiatives. For WDMH, these agreements provide new partners for our research proposals. The third winner is the Canadian rural health care system, which achieves both cost savings because of better utilization of resources, and a more robust rural research outcome.

To date, we have successfully signed MOU’s with four organizations:

• Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health 
• Arnprior Regional Health
• Kemptville District Hospital
• Williamsburg Non-Profit Housing Corporation

Vertical Networking

Vertical networking involves connecting with national leaders in rural research. These centres are experts in the field. By connecting with them, we can access resources such as methods centres and funding opportunities. Our primary partner for vertical networking is The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) and The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI). The Ottawa Hospital is a leading academic health sciences centre in Canada and is recognized for its outstanding research at the OHRI. The OHRI Methods Centre is one of the valuable resources that come from this networking. The Methods Centre provides expertise and support to health professionals and researchers at all stages of a research project including services such as Research Design Methodology, Biostatistics, Data Management, Economics, Knowledge Translation, and much more. WDMH utilizes the skills of the scientists at The Methods Centre to fill in the gaps, to gain knowledge, and to receive guidance on our work.

Collaborations

WDMH has been able to collaborate with several academic, research and other institutions on a number of proposed studies, these collaborations have included the OHRI, TOH, community medical clinics, other hospitals, Bruyère Research Institute, Concordia University, University of Ottawa, Canadian Patient Safety Institute, HealthLinks, Gateway Research, University of Waterloo, Institute For Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Canada, Health Standard Organization (HSO), and many more.