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We are an independent health policy think tank that supports health system integration and quality improvement in home and community care in Ontario. |
Exchanges & EventsIn its strategic plan, The Change Foundation promises to drive informed public debate through active engagement with decision-makers. To this end, the Foundation will hold a series of signature events throughout the year tailored to targeted audiences to advance an honest exchange of views – and sometimes actions -- among participants. These sessions will be designed to present and provoke the latest evidence, analysis, experience, and insights on a range of timely topics requiring "our finest thought." The Foundation plans to host a series of learning exchanges tailored to different audiences -- all intended to drive public and policy discussion that will inform our collective understanding of what it takes to successfully and measurably integrate health-care services in Ontario. Meeting of the Minds The Change Foundation designed the model for its signature invitational exchange series, Meeting of the Minds, true to its tagline -- health care deserves our finest thought – and to its commitment to drive informed policy debate. The Meeting of the Minds offers select members of Ontario's health-care community a facilitated forum for frank and substantive discussion where they can hear, deliberate -- and perhaps heed – the evidence, experience, and insights presented by proven health-care leaders and thinkers across the country and beyond. In the fall of 2007, The Foundation produced an environmental scan of similar exchanges and conducted key informant interviews with senior health leaders in Ontario to help determine the best way to engage stakeholders in purposeful dialogue about health and health care. June 16, 17th 2009 Meeting of the Minds, First things first: fostering accountable, connected, and quality primary health care, tackles a tough topic, but you can see from the program and participant list that we're putting some fine minds to it. See the framing paper for the discussion at the event. The event opened with an evening debate between Emergency staff physician and broadcaster Brian Goldman and Champlain LHIN CEO Robert Cushman about whether the LHINs should have authority over primary health care. The next day featured presentations and discussions about how jurisdictions inside (BC/QC) and outside (UK/US) Canada have brought primary health care into the fold to good effect. A summary report has been prepared and shared. See report from Meeting of the Minds 2008 - Lessons and Confessions from the Regionalized Health-care Front. Other exchanges Other exchanges include panel discussions to workshops to town hall forums and lunch-time sessions, tapping top research and policy minds provincially, nationally and internationally, drawing on lessons learned from experiences in the field, and weaving in the perspectives and lived realities of patients and their caregivers. The insights and information gleaned from these events will be embedded in the Foundation's work, and shared widely with government, the health-care community, and beyond. In addition to these sessions, The Change Foundation will reach out to stakeholders across the health-care spectrum and beyond in a variety of ways to give and receive information and analysis and to open doors to possible partnerships and collaborations on issues of common cause.
As readers might recall, last year the Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund (CWF) decided to put their minds and money together to co-sponsor a US-Canada health policy exchange, focusing first on primary care reform. The inaugural international meeting on health-care quality, "Innovations in Primary Care" takes place next month in New York and will convene about 20 American and Canadian policy leaders. They will dive deep into what makes or breaks good primary care on both sides of the border and surface with common and discrete solutions to improve primary care - and the performance of our respective health systems. "The picture is clear and it isn’t pretty: the U.S. and Canada remain far behind other countries in providing quality primary care on many counts," says Change Foundation CEO Cathy Fooks. "That’s why we need exchanges like this - to identify what changes are possible and preferable, and where improvements could become permanent." The forum will focus on goals, best practices, quality measurement, culture change, and workforce and aging population issues. The group will also probe the CWF’s rich and respected cross-national comparisons on primary care and results from international surveys of chronically ill patients and primary care doctors. In addition to an impressive lineup of American speakers, including CWF president Karen Davis, US Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Sherry Glied, and leaders in the field, there is a strong contingent of Canadian primary care experts, including Brian Hutchinson, William Hogg, Heather Manson, Bonnie Brossart, and Ruth Wilson. Read the agenda and check our website in the spring for case studies on exemplary health systems and other papers commissioned for the exchange. September 30, 2009 When decision makers gather to tackle a difficult health-care issue – whether around the Cabinet table, in a health-care board room, or at a legislative committee -- how does the latest policy research shine amid a crowd of competing influences? And how do you ensure that the latest evidence will be shared and embedded into practice at the point of care? Read the sage advice from Dr. John Lavis, Canada’s Research Chair in Knowledge Translation and Uptake, and Dr. Paula Goering, Director of Health Systems Research and Consulting Unit, CAMH. Lavis and Goering presented at a symposium, Bridging the “Know-Do” gap hosted by The Change Foundation Sept. 23. Over fifty nursing leaders, Ministry of Health policy experts, and health-care KT practitioners attended the symposium, which was moderated by Change Foundation Chair Scott Dudgeon, with welcoming remarks by Vanessa Burkoski, Ontario’s Provincial Chief Nursing Officer. In addition to an animated discussion about how to overcome barriers to effective KT and implement strategies to create a more evidence-based policy-making culture in Ontario, the symposium showcased on-the-ground lessons from provincial nursing practice improvement projects funded by the Nursing Secretariat and supported by The Change Foundation from 2004 to 2009. The diverse projects ranged from an oncology framework for Advanced Practice Nurses to a website for street nurses. Interactive digital voting on current KT challenges and success strategies during an afternoon workshop sparked dialogue and revealed the group’s preferences and priorities. Change Foundation CEO Cathy Fooks closed the event, reinforcing an organizational commitment to bridge the KT gap through ongoing collaborative research with reports and forums targeting Ontario decision-makers to raise the level of political and public discourse on health-care policy. March 11, 2009 The Change Foundation hosts symposium/workshop in partnership with LHINs. Community engagement (CE) is not just a legislated requirement for Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and health service providers, it is also an important lever to transform health-care. That's why The Change Foundation partnered with the LHINs to host an interactive, invitational symposium and workshop, Community Engagement & The LHINs: Truth & Consequences, on March 11th in Toronto. Targeted to LHIN CEOs, Board Chairs, senior LHIN staff/CE Leads, the program featured experts in CE research and practice such as Julia Abelson of McMaster University and Peter MacLeod from Mass LBP, as well as a panel of LHIN CEOs Gwen DuBois-Wing and Paul Huras. The symposium/workshop was offered at an opportune time as the LHINs plan how to engage their publics in the development of Integrated Health Service Plans for 2010-2013. The afternoon workshop built on and expand participants' CE expertise, showcasing useful models, tools, tips, case studies, and applying past experience to current priorities and challenges. To reflect realities in the field, the day incorporated the LHIN CE priorities and experiences identified in a pre-event survey. Read the program and look for a report summarizing key learnings from Truth & Consequences on our website. February 25, 2009 Chaired by Foundation board member and respected health consultant Neil Stuart, the roundtable brought together some of the best, most forward-looking minds on geriatric health policy from across the country with a special focus on initiatives in British Columbia and Quebec. The diverse gathering drew senior policy decision-makers in Ontario, drawn from the Cabinet and Premier's Office, health sector associations, LHINs, CCACs and provincial ministries across Canada. Roundtable discussion was based on a paper, Moving Toward Health Service Integration: Provincial Progress in System Change for Seniors prepared by CPRN Senior Research Fellow, Margaret MacAdam with funding from Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The report includes a literature review and the results of a survey of provincial progress in implementing the features of integrated care systems (based on the respected Hollander Prince Framework for organizing continuing care services.) MacAdam's work shows that while every province has made public commitments to providing integrated care, progress is uneven, and some features are not well developed by any jurisdiction. The paper covers key areas for reform, including policy changes, administrative and clinical best practices, linkages with hospitals, primary care, and social and human services. Ontario is lauded for its $700 million Aging at Home strategy, a substantial three-year investment into integrated community support services, but it has yet to create a single entry point to the full range of CCAC and community support services, or provide a wide basket of community supports, expand assisted living support or accelerate the development of an Electronic Health Record (EHR). The roundtable featured both presentations and informal small group disussions. Two panels discussed and profiled integrated care solutions in Canada. Rejean Hebert, Dean of Medicine at University of Sherbrooke, shared Quebec's leading work on integrated information systems -- an element commonly endorsed by all provinces as key to progress -- and Katie Hill, Director of Home and Community Care, Ministry of Health Services in British Columbia highlighted that province's new initiatives to proactively prevent avoidable hospitalizations by seniors. Read the related CPRN report Implementing Integrated Care Frameworks of Integrated Care for the Elderly: A Systematic Review also by Margaret MacAdam. Read the program and stay tuned this spring for a summary report from the round-table with policy recommendations for Ontario.
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