An alliance created to build healthcare capacity…
In October 2009, Amdocs Inc. merged with The North West Company in order to develop a long-term strategy for improving community-based health care delivery and hospital-based services in northern Canada. As an organization successful at providing isolated communities with physician services, Amdocs (and the First Nation communities it serves) will benefit directly from this partnership with North West, by means of its established expertise in remote talent recruitment, logistics, infrastructure development, community relations, and provision of everyday food, essentials, and services to a vast northern geography.
Amdocs—reducing health inequalities in the North
Amdocs Inc. was founded in 2003 by Dr. Anthon Meyer, a dedicated family physician originally from South Africa, who was working in Thompson, Manitoba at the time. Envisioned as a unique, cost-effective healthcare delivery model that could improve health, save lives, and reduce the burden of illness in First Nations and Inuit communities in Canada’s north, Amdocs developed a unique approach that directly involves the patient and the community as partners in a comprehensive health management plan.
In the few years since it’s formation, Amdocs has developed both a successful, self-sustaining model of care and a proven record of effective healthcare delivery by directly improving health outcomes of First Nation people in the communities served. Amdocs has been recognized by First Nations, Federal, and Provincial governments as a leader in primary care that emphasizes prevention, acute illness treatment, and chronic disease management. Today, Amdocs provides family physician services to more than 30,000 Cree, Ojibway and Oji-Cree people in First Nations communities across Manitoba and Northwest Ontario—some communities are served with full-time on-site physician services, while others enjoy 7/365 telephone on-call services.
NWC—much more than “frontier merchants”
The North West Company has been a leading retailer of food and everyday products and services in remote and rural northern communities for generations, successfully operating some 180 stores in northern Canada and Alaska. In the area of Health Products & Services, North West has developed considerable expertise in the integrated delivery of pharmacy operations (with 13 retail pharmacies currently operating across Northern Canada, the Company currently employs more than 30 pharmacists), the provision of day-time hospital inpatient pharmacy services to 20+ remote Northern Ontario hospitals (ranging in size from 50 to 400 beds), remote distribution of services run out of Tuktoyaktuk (a pilot program with the NWT Government), and the development of considerable expertise in remote talent and health professional recruitment and retention and regulatory affairs management. Read a profile of North West here.
Residents of remote northern communities lack adequate care in terms of resources, expertise, and access to comprehensive physician services. Requirements for basic health services in First Nations and Inuit communities are growing at unprecedented rates relative to the rest of Canada. These communities are actively pursuing fundamental health care reform through partnership discussions—at the same time, Federal and Provincial governments are seeking more cost effective health care delivery models.
It is this opportunity that the Amdocs/North West Company alliance is embracing: the development and delivery of innovative healthcare programs and solutions that can help guard against disease, helping to increase awareness of healthy living initiatives that can reduce the risk of chronic illness, and the building of sustainable community-based healthcare capacity.