BORN Ontario works closely with regional maternal-child health networks to support their data and information access needs for continuous quality improvement and adherence to care standards to reduce variations in maternal-child health care outcomes. 

Our Shared Purposes 

Maternal, newborn, and child health regional networks support local planning, coordination among providers, and implementation of provincial standards and guidelines to improve quality of care across the province. A regional network adds significant system value through its ability to: 

  • Provide better health outcomes through systematic improvements in health promotion, illness and injury prevention, acute and follow-up care, and patient safety; 

  • Provide better operational management through improved asset management within the organization and across the region resulting in greater return on investment; 

  • Provide better systems integration through improved communication, program planning, and support resulting in greater coordination across the region; and 

  • Enhance learning and growth by promoting and advocating for a consistent standard of care throughout the region. 

In support of the networks’ pursuit of these goals, BORN makes Network reports available to the networks through BORN’s data request process. These reports may include, without limitation, data identifying individually named hospitals where care has been provided. These reports will include summarized, aggregated information and metrics in alignment with our policies to preserve confidentiality of individual cases. These reports are produced by BORN without any user or production fees being paid to BORN by the networks.

Many of BORN’s purposes align with this work including:  

  • Facilitating continuous improvement of health care delivery tools to minimize adverse outcomes for health care recipients; 

  • Identifying where outcomes for health care recipients are statistically discrepant with accepted norms; 

  • Enabling health care providers to improve care to health care recipients by providing them with reports to compare themselves with peers and/or benchmarks; 

  • Knowledge translation to improve the quality and efficiency of care for health care recipients; and  

  • Providing health care providers with comprehensive and timely reports to support quality improvement, effective planning, administration, and management of health care delivery for health care recipients. 

Protecting the Data within BORN’s Network Reports  

Networks will share the information contained in BORN Network reports with representatives from their partner organizations. Those representatives and the participating organizations may change from time to time.   

All users and recipients of BORN Network reports, or the data tables, graphs, or analyses contained in the reports must not:  

(a) Use the data included in any report, data table, graph, or analyses for any purpose other than those that relate to the purposes highlighted above in “Our Shared Purposes”; 

(b) Use the data included in any report, data table, graph, or analyses to contact a patient for any purpose; 

(c) Use the reports or the data included in any report for research*;

(d) Publish, share or otherwise make available for public consumption any summaries, data tables, or graphs included in the BORN reports or information derived from the data contained in the reports;  

(e) Use any data included in any report, table, graph, or analyses alone or in combination with other information, to identify an individual. This includes attempting to decrypt information that is encrypted or identifying an individual based on information that is unencrypted and/or prior knowledge, unless the re-identification is permitted or required by law.  

Any user or recipient of a BORN Network report agrees to notify BORN at the first reasonable opportunity if the person or their organization contravenes or believes there may have been a contravention of the obligations listed in (a) – (e) above. 

Amendments  

The information contained on this page may change from time to time as necessary to comply with the changes to the requirements of PHIPA or any decisions or requirements established by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (“IPC”), as reasonably required by BORN or the networks.  

More Resources 

* For clarity, the prohibition on research use prohibits any systematic investigation designed to develop or establish principles, facts or generalizable knowledge, or any combination of them, and includes the development, testing and evaluation of research as provided for in section 2 of Ontario’s Personal Health and Information Act, 2004 (“PHIPA”). Although personal health information will not be shared with networks, the network and its participating organizations acknowledge that such information is used to generate the BORN Network reports. The networks shall only use the reports for purposes permitted by applicable laws including without limitation PHIPA and its Regulation.