Path to Adventure: St. Joe's Debbie Bang to take on provincial role
Debbie Bang, at the park behind the Womankind Addiction Service building on Nov. 17, 2017.
The search for a new director of quality improvement at Addictions and Mental Health Ontario ended with a Bang — St. Joe's Debbie Bang, that is.
Over the next 17 months, Debbie will be leaving her post as Manager of Womankind Addiction Service, MASH and Eating Disorders Clinic to work with the provincial agency on ways to collect and interpret data. The idea is to use that data to guide future decision making.
"We ask questions and evaluate every single program that I'm responsible for," Debbie said. It's a practice that the ministry of health wants to see in place across Ontario.
Debbie said wait times, for example, could be improved through better data collection. It's now measured differently by various addictions and mental health care providers.
"As a result, there's no way to report what wait times are. The ministry of health wants to know how long it takes to get into programs and that's one of the things I'll be working on," Debbie said. That goes hand-in-hand with new standards of practice that she'll help introduce to clinicians working with people living with depression, schizophrenia and opioid use. Individuals presenting at a health facility experiencing withdrawal symptoms should receive support and relief within three hours. In practice, that is not happening with regularity today. It will take some data analysis before decisions can be made on ways to improve.
"Working with data is a nerd interest of mine," Debbie said.
She first came to St. Joe's in 1991 to work in consumer health. Eight years later, she was asked to manage the women's detox program for six months and it became a passion – Debbie has been there since.
It was in that role that she gained much of the experience she'll need to help the Ontario Health Ministry. In 2004 Debbie was involved in the amalgamation of Women's Detox and Mary Ellis House into Womankind, which she said is one of her most meaningful career achievements. The hospital leadership at the time worked hard to secure funding and Debbie was given training on how to manage the complex merger.
"I was supported to go to a project management course and to visit like services across the province," she said. "Concentrating women's services in one location is absolutely the best practice. Women face more consequences, such as the loss of children."
The idea of treating more than one disorder concurrently is also reflected in the programming offered at St. Joe's West 5th Campus. Debbie said it's yet another example of our hospital being 'avant-garde' in the field of mental health.
"Commitment is not a strong enough word for what I've seen at St. Joe's. There was an absolute intention to make a state-of-the-art, compassionate, respectful and dignified place for the people who are most vulnerable in our society (at the West 5th Campus)," Debbie said.
She has a dual goal for the next year-and-a-half as she meets with mental health care providers across the province. Debbie plans to share the work being done at St. Joe's and to bring back new learnings and connections when she returns.