How We're Keeping You Safe During COVID-19

We are living in extraordinary times. Your safety and that of our staff remain our constant priority. The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant disruption to all of our lives, with positive cases in Ontario growing higher than previously recorded. The new COVID-19 variants are more contagious and deadlier than what we have seen to date. The purpose of this letter is to update you on our COVID-19 safety practices and to share resources about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Screening for COVID-19 Symptoms

You will be screened by our staff for symptoms of COVID-19 before every visit. This step is mandatory before starting care. This means if you are receiving care multiple times a day, you will be asked these questions multiple times a day to ensure our staff can properly protect themselves. We strongly urge you to answer these questions honestly. Your answers will not impact your care. You will still receive care. The only difference will be the addition of a gown worn by our staff. Refusing to answer the screening questions may result in delayed or suspended service.

Personal Protection Equipment (PPE)

Every time one of our staff enters your home, they must wear a medical mask, eye protection (goggles or face shields) and gloves, every time. If you notice staff not wearing any of these pieces of protection, you can either remind them to wear it or notify us at 905-822-2273 ext. 160. If you are able to wear a mask during your visit, we request that you do so.

Protecting Yourself from COVID

COVID is extremely dangerous and deadly. We protect you from COVID by having our staff wear proper PPE and by having our staff screen themselves for symptoms daily. If they fail the screener, they do not attend work and are tested before returning to work. You can protect yourself from COVID by adhering to the Provincial guidelines, minimizing who enters your home (only essential care), washing your hands frequently and most importantly, getting your COVID-19 vaccine.

Get Your COVID-19 Vaccine – the #1 Way to Prevent Hospitalization and Death Due to COVID We want to ensure you remain protected against the deadly impact of COVID. The safest and most effective way to do that is to get your COVID-19 vaccine. You are eligible for the vaccine. You can book it here: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/book-vaccine/ and select “Chronic home health care recipients.” If you need assistance with booking or are homebound and need alternative options, please contact our office for assistance: info@nucleusonline.ca or 905-829-4499.

Nucleus staff have been eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine since the end of February 2021. As of November 30, 2021, Nucleus requires all staff, volunteers and contactors (including agency staff) to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to be scheduled for work.

Our continued vigilance to safety has resulted in zero cases of transmission from person-to-person within Nucleus to date. Every time we learn of any improvement to be made, we update our practices immediately and without hesitation. If you would like to continue to be updated on the latest information, please send your e-mail to info@nucleusonline.ca .

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Building a Scalable Digital Health Ecosystem

October 23, 2026

Over the past four years, Nucleus has moved from using digital systems mainly as administrative tools to using them as part of daily decision-making, service oversight, communication and organizational planning. The shift is not about the tools themselves. It is about how the tools are embedded into operations. “Nucleus has been investing in staff digital literacy, process redesign and change management, recognizing that digital transformation is as much about people and culture as it is about technology. This thoughtful, practical approach positions Nucleus not just to adapt to system changes, but to help shape them,” shared Lori Holloway, CEO, Ontario Community Support Association. “The fundamental change is that Nucleus has shifted from reactive, manual and system-dependent work toward a more proactive, datainformed, digitally enabled operating model. Teams can now monitor and respond to issues – double-booked shifts, scheduling gaps, service-code exceptions, before they become larger problems.” - Shiva Vosoughi, Lead of Digital Health & Privacy A few examples from this year tell the story. 1. The Integrated Decision Support (IDS) platform: administered by the Ontario Hospital Association, gives Nucleus the ability to link internal records with regional data, including hospital admissions and emergency department visits. The result is a sharper picture of clients’ health system journeys and an ability to identify risk earlier. 2. Department-specific dashboards: give frontline managers real-time access to operational and quality indicators. Care Team Leads, Care Coordinators and managers now use data to support attendant performance review, Hospital to Home journey monitoring, scheduling oversight and operational issue identification, moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive operational management. 3. Service code data entry accuracy was sustained at less than 1% error throughout fiscal year 2025- 2026, with an average error rate of approximately 0.17%. It reflects data quality monitoring, staff accountability and operational checkpoints working in concert. 4 . Family Portal: Nucleus’ client and family-facing AlayaCare interface, added a major feature on February 23, 2026: clients and families can now access their personalized care plans through the portal app. The launch followed a careful cross-functional planning effort. The feature represents the next phase of Family Portal evolution: clients move from viewing schedules to seeing their own care goals and care planning information directly. 5. Dial My Calls , a new mass communication system, allows Nucleus to deliver pre-recorded, standardized voice messages to clients and staff in inclement weather and other emergencies. Expanded use cases are being explored. 6 . Custom applications and integrated data: Nucleus has built its own applications and linked previously siloed systems - incident reporting, finance, human resources, scheduling and hospital data - into a single picture spanning client assessments, service utilization and acute-care use. The result is a clear line of sight from frontline service to system-level outcomes like avoidable hospital visits and alternate-level-of-care days, and the ability to map a client's journey before and after Nucleus to advocate for funding and inform regional service planning. 7. Sandbox Initiative : In partnership with the University of Toronto's Sandbox program - a model that brings real organizational challenges into academic-applied research - Nucleus continued its food-insecurity geo-mapping and Adult Day Service business case work, and went further this year by sharing de-identified data on roughly 4,000 clients with student research teams in statistics and human biology. Their independent analyses found that clients rely on the hospital system less after starting with Nucleus, with the strongest effects among the highest-need clients: unscheduled admissions for clients with mental health conditions fell by roughly 40%, and clients with cardiovascular conditions saw inpatient admissions, readmissions and costs drop by 35–55%. These are exploratory analyses that describe patterns rather than prove causation, but they offer external, data-grounded support for what Nucleus sees in practice - that home- and community-based care keeps people healthier at home and eases pressure on acute care. For Nucleus, building a scalable digital health ecosystem means connecting people, processes, and information in ways that strengthen care today and create capacity for tomorrow. By pairing practical technology with staff expertise, strong partnerships, and a commitment to continuous improvement, Nucleus is turning data into action - helping clients remain healthier at home while contributing to a more responsive and sustainable health system.