Let's get together

Hugh B. MacLeod is CEO of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. His interests lie in the areas of system/integrative thinking, sustainability, and organizational cultures that create high performance.

While we may have differences in how we move forward the quality agenda, we have common challenges and with them common opportunities to be leveraged, shaped, and enabled. Now is the time for strong, courageous and committed collaborative leadership from funders, policy makers, direct delivery operations and supporting national and provincial organizations. While good policy direction and alignment of effort are important, the patient voice is a huge system quality and patient safety lever and enabler…a valuable game changer. 

Which way to Quality, challenges us to meet and work together. A common thread throughout the report is a call for an aligned quality agenda that links federal, provincial and local efforts.  A smooth operating system is not the product of a series of isolated actions. We need the orchestration of interactions at the right time, for the right patients, in the right places. The following quote from the report sums up for me where we must go… “all of us can benefit from learning more about each other’s quality improvement efforts, sharing what works, and discussing ways to overcome common challenges. Sharing information and innovation among provinces and territories is absolutely the way to go”.If we collectively want to accelerate change and improve performance on a larger scale as discussed in this report, we have to do things differently. “We” means the actors (many were interviewed for this report) – governments, regulatory agencies, organizations, leaders, etc. All have either legal or moral authority to demand and compel a different path forward.

On the Patient Safety front, CPSI through its new business plan is committed to providing leadership through a consortium of partners to establish a National Integrated Patient Safety Strategy. In keeping with the spirit of this report, CPSI has identified three complimentary goals: knowledge mobilization and innovation; building capability (patient safety knowledge and skills) and expanding reach by engaging audiences across the health system.

Which way to Quality? Let’s answer the question by coming together and working together!