Get Hip with HIPS

We are a Nurse Practitioner and Family Physician who lead the HIPS (Home-based Interdisciplinary Primary Care for Seniors) Program in the Mount Sinai Academic Family Health Team.  As the name suggests, we, along with our fantastic team, provide comprehensive primary care to our patients who are unable to leave their home without a great deal of effort. We provide acute care, chronic disease management, palliative and end of life care, with an added focus on addressing psychosocial concerns.

We have built our team from the ground up- first starting with one physician and nurse practitioner doing home visits twice a week, and now have expanded our program by bringing in a second part-time family physician and establishing an academic program.  The academic program involves our family medicine residents in addition to nursing, pharmacy, social work, and nurse practitioner students.  It is great to see future primary care practitioners gain experience providing primary care until end of life in the homes of our patients. We have also established really important linkages with a LHIN coordinator, who meets with all our patients and helps us identify and arrange optimal home care services.  Our clinic nurse attends program meetings and is aware of all patients in case they call in with concerns. We have also linked with volunteers through Circle of Care who offer friendly visits to our patients.  Our team administered COVID vaccines to our patients throughout the pandemic and continued to see people in their homes safely throughout.  By developing a tight communication network amongst our team, we have successfully enhanced social supports, promoted healthy behaviours and improved access to primary care for some of our most vulnerable patients.

The program has been expanding at a steady rate. We were very proud when we received the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario’s Bright Lights award a few years ago- and our program is even more comprehensive since then- through our drive to improve both access and quality of care to home based seniors.

Sheena Luck, NP and May Loganathan MD