RITTS Project FAQ

The Rehabilitation Integrated Transition Tracking System (RITTS) is a rehabilitation referral tracking and database system spanning rehabilitation services offered throughout the Champlain region.

The RITTS serves to facilitate coordination and integration of rehabilitation services between health service providers within the hospitals in the region by enabling its users to:

• Search for care-providers and facilities who offer a specific rehabilitation service;
• Send and receive referrals using a standardized referral format that ensure that adequate and appropriate information is used;
• Create and maintain a list of patients and patient-specific information that can be searched.

These features enable health care-providers and patients to search for rehabilitation services in the Champlain region and for physicians to send and receive referrals and information about referrals, as well as manage patient and referral information, in a timely fashion.

There are twenty-one sites across the Champlain region listed in the RITTS database. Also listed are the rehabilitation services offered at each site, inclusion and exclusion criteria and contact information:

1. Almonte General Hospital/Fairview Manor, Almonte
2. Arnprior and District Memorial Hospital, Arnprior
3. Carleton Place District and Memorial Hospital, Carleton Place
4. Civic Campus, Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa
5. Cornwall Community Hospital, Second Street Site, Cornwall
6. Deep River and District Hospital, Deep River
7. Bruyère Continuing Care
8. General Campus, Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa
9. Glengarry Memorial Hospital, Alexandria
10. Hawkesbury and District General Hospital, Hawkesbury
11. Kemptville District Hospital, Kemptville
12. Ottawa Carleton Community Care Access Centres (CCAC)
13. Pembroke Regional Hospital, Pembroke
14. Renfrew Victoria Hospital, Renfrew
15. Riverside Campus, Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa
16. Robin Easy Centre, Ottawa
17. St. Francis Memorial Hospital, Barry's Bay
18. The Queensway-Carleton, Ottawa
19. The Rehabilitation Centre, Ottawa
20. University of Ottawa- Heart Institute, Ottawa
21. Winchester District Memorial Hospital

The following counties are included in the Champlain region: Ottawa-Carleton, Renfrew, the five eastern counties of Prescott and Russell, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry and Lanark-Leeds-Grenville.

The RITTS is designed to decrease the time it takes for a care-provider to refer a rehabilitation patient to another care-provider. Between the point at which a care-provider sends a referral and the point at which the necessary information is collected in full by the receiver and confirmed, patient needs are unmet. The RITTS ensures that all necessary information is sent with a referral, decreasing patient wait times and the labour load of those making and receiving referrals. RITTS allows for faster referral delivery and the improved flow of patient information.

A partner facility can send and receive rehabilitation referrals through the RITTS within Champlain region.

To use the RITTS to send and receive rehabilitation referrals, you must first have access to The Ottawa Hospital’s ‘myTOH’ Portal.

Once your application for access to the Portal has been approved, a member of the RITTS team will follow up with you to determine what level of access you require. By logging in to the Portal you will automatically get access to the RITTS, enabling you to access the system to send and / or receive rehabilitation referrals.

To access ‘myTOH’ Portal, you must first submit an application to TOH Information Services department. If you are working at one of the hospitals in the Champlain region other than TOH, you should contact your IS/IT department. Each hospital in the region has a designated RA in their hospital who handles the application for myTOH portal.

If you already have access to ‘myTOH’ Portal, but need the RITTS application added to it in order to send and receive rehabilitation referrals, contact the RITTS administrator. The RITTS team will follow up with you shortly in order to determine what level of access you require.

No. Anyone may search the participating facilities in the Champlain region for a rehabilitation service. Information about these facilities is accessible to all visitors to the RITTS website.

Ideally, yes. Just as a referral can be tracked back to an authorizing physician in a facility, the RITTS prefers to have referrals originate from a physician’s account by linking the sending support’s account to the physician’s. Remember, a physician does not need to log in or use the RITTS account for their support to send and / or receive referrals on their behalf. If you have any questions about physician accounts, please contact a member of the RITTS team for more information by clicking here.

No. Depending on your position and responsibilities relative to the rehabilitation referral process, the RITTS staff will grant a specific level of access during the process of creating an account. For example, admitting staff may receive and redirect referrals, but they may not send referrals.

That different users have different levels of access is intended to provide a convenient and secure referral process for all of the RITTS' users.

All users may search for rehabilitation services, to see which hospitals and facilities offer them, or may learn more about a specific hospital and facility by accessing the Find a Rehab Service tab. Clicking the sub tab By Facility (map) allows the user to view important inclusion and exclusion criteria, the facility's contact information and any additional information that the facility has provided to the RITTS about their rehabilitation services. Users can also select a facility to review from a map of the Champlain region.

All users may search for rehabilitation services to see which hospitals and facilities offer them by accessing the Find a Rehab Service tab. Clicking the By Rehabilitation Service sub-tab allows the user to search for facilities by rehabilitation service.

The type of rehabilitation services currently used in RITTS is: Inpatient – specialized rehabilitation.

Stroke

The nine diagnostic categories used on the RITTS website were identified during consultation with rehabilitation specialists in the Ottawa area. The division into nine categories reflects the areas of specialization that have been developed by professionals within the rehabilitation services and programs. Each of the diagnostic categories such as Stroke, Amputee or Acquired Brain Injury includes specific medical diagnoses and/or conditions that can be placed under them. The nine rehabilitation diagnostic categories used in RITTS are:

1. Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)
2. Amputee
3. Cardiac Rehab
4. Geriatric Rehab
5. Musculoskeletal
6. Neuromuscular
7. Respiratory Rehab
8. Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)
9. Stroke

Arthritis Society OT Clinic

Behavioural Therapy

Botox Spasticity

CF Speciality Clinic

Chiropodist

Driving assessment / evaluation

EMG clinic

Falls clinic

Feldenkrais: Individual & Group

Geriatric Clinic

Geriatric Psychological Assessment

Hand Therapy

Life Skills Counselling

Neurology clinic

Neuropsych testing

Nursing

Nutrition

Occupational Therapy

Orthopaedic clinic

Orthotics

Orthotist

Pain: Chronic

Parkinson's Exercise class

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Pharmacy

Physiatry

Physiatry Clinic

Physiotherapy

Podiatrist

Prosthetics

Prosthetist

Psychology

Recreation

Social Work

Special Seating clinic

Speech Language Pathology

Rehabilitation Engineering

Respiratory Therapy

Smoking Cessation

Spiritual Care

Stuttering Program

Swallowing studies

Technology Access

Telehealth Medicine

Total Foot Care

Vestibular retraining

Vocational Evaluation

"Acute care" is the phase of short-term care conducted in a hospital or a facility, during which a patient receives direct attention from a care-provider for a serious affliction or trauma.

The primary emphasis of an "Acute Rehabilitation Program" is the early phase of rehabilitation, usually beginning as soon as the patient is medically stable. Acute rehabilitation usually takes place in a hospital, utilizes a comprehensive team approach, with the patient's stay averaging 3 to 4 months. The focus of an Acute Rehabilitation Program is intense physical and cognitive therapy.

The primary emphasis of a "Behavioural Rehabilitation Program" is an intervention with a person who exhibits destructive behaviour to themselves or others preventing active participation in family and community. The goal of a Behavioural Rehabilitation Program is to develop adaptive behaviour in the individual so that they can move to a less structured environment and meet their patient-identified goals.

The goal of "short-term rehabilitation" is an individual's functional restoration, impairment accommodation and the promotion of their independence, and usually usually involves one-to-three week stay in a facility.

The goal of "specialized rehabilitation" is an individual's functional restoration, impairment accommodation and the promotion of their independence, and usually involves a four-to-twenty-four week stay in a facility.

The goal of "geriatric rehabilitation" is to maximize the physical, cognitive and social functioning in elderly patients whose health status has been compromised, and usually involves a four-to-ten week stay in a facility.

"Outpatient rehabilitation" occurs when a rehabilitation patient is not hospitalized overnight but visits a hospital, clinic, or facility for an assessment and then a scheduled series of treatments planned to reach patient-identified goals within an anticipated time frame.

Based in a non-hospital setting, a "Community-based Rehab Service" provides training for rehabilitation patients who wish to live with greater independence. A patient's average length of stay is eight months.

Based in a non-hospital setting, a "Community-based Day Program Rehabilitation Service" provides training for rehabilitation patients in an unresidential setting. A patient's average length of stay is three to twenty-four months.

Based in a residential or skilled nursing environment, "Community-Based, Long-Term Residential Care" is intended for persons requiring lifelong support services.

"Cognitive Rehabilitation" involves therapy programs aiding patients in the management of specific problems of perception, memory, thinking and problem solving. Cognitive skills are practiced and strategies are taught to help improve intellectual functions and/or compensate for deficits.

"Home-Based Services" involve support services provided in the home by professional service providers, home-support service providers or other care-providers, and may include support and training for the patient's family or a caregiver.

"Community-Based Services" involve rehabilitation and support services provided in the home, work-site, educational setting or at another designated centre.

"Allied Health Services" are the teams of clinicians, such as OT/PT specialists and social workers, usually located on hospital wards, responsible for the acute care of patients. Members of Allied Health Services often work in team-based environments where they work together to send referrals for acute care patients

RITTS users may only access the system via ‘myTOH’ Portal. This way, only preauthorized users have access to the RITTS. The RITTS website adheres to established standards for secure transmission of information via the Internet as recognized by the leading Internet standards organization, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). These standards include the use of SSL browser encryption, passwords and usernames.

RITTS users are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the RITTS privacy policy and terms of use documents for further details of user and staff responsibility with regards to protecting important information.

The RITTS supports the use of all major web browsers, such as Microsoft Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox. However, the TOH Helpdesk only provides support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer versions 6 and up.

RITTS ensures that information entered into the system remains private, including user e-mail information. Absolutely no contact information or user information of any kind is distributed to any organization or commercial body under any circumstances.