About Us

About Us

Healthcare Excellence Canada works with partners to spread innovations, build capability and catalyze policy changes so that everyone in Canada has safe and high-quality healthcare.

How we work

Through collaboration with patients, caregivers and people working in healthcare, we turn proven innovations into lasting improvements in all dimensions of healthcare excellence.

Healthcare Excellence Canada focuses on improving care of older adults, bringing care closer to home with safe transitions, and supporting pandemic recovery and resilience – with safety and quality embedded across all our efforts. We’re committed to fostering inclusive and equitable care through meaningful partnerships with different groups, including patients and caregivers, First Nations, Inuit and Métis, healthcare providers and more. 

Launched in 2021, Healthcare Excellence Canada brings together the Canadian Patient Safety Institute and Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement. We are an independent, not-for-profit charity funded primarily by Health Canada. 

Our strategy

Healthcare Excellence Canada’s inaugural five-year strategy (202126) was developed with input from people in every province and territory. It captures what excellence in healthcare means to them, the issues that matter most and how we can help.

Check out our strategy to learn more.

Truth and reconciliation action plan report thumbnail

Our commitment to truth and reconciliation 

HEC’s Truth and Reconciliation Action Plan provides a roadmap for the work HEC will undertake to live up to our commitments and continue developing our ability to help shape a future where everyone in Canada has safe and high-quality healthcare. 

Read our plan

Meet the Leadership Team

Who we are - Leadership

Senior Leadership

Healthcare Excellence Canada is led by a team of creative changemakers with a wide range of expertise spanning patient safety, quality improvement, health policy, knowledge translation and more. Working together, they inspire and guide our pursuit of excellence.

Meet the Senior Leadership Team

Who we are - Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Our volunteer Board of Directors includes a diverse group of leaders who are passionate about improving healthcare, with – and for – everyone in Canada. 

Meet the Board of Directors

Our story

In 2021, Healthcare Excellence Canada was created following the amalgamation of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute and Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement.  

Both organizations achieved a lot, but recognizing that there was more to do, Healthcare Excellence Canada was established with a greater capacity to deliver lasting improvement. 

Read our story to learn more.

In your words

Excellent care is safe care for EVERY patient every time. Patients and families partner in making care safer at all levels. After harm there is support, healing and learning.

Theresa Malloy-Miller

Patients for Patient Safety Canada, Co-chair

Excellence in healthcare is characterized by relationships of mutual care and concern; a system that engenders kindness and is sensitive and responsive to the human needs of all parties.

Allison Kooijman

Patients for Patient Safety Canada, Co-chair

Excellence isn’t achieved in isolation – it’s achieved when we share, learn and collaborate with each other. Healthcare Excellence Canada has a vital opportunity to facilitate connections across provinces and territories, and we look forward to working together in our pursuit of quality care for Canadians.

Christina Krause

Chief Executive Officer, Health Quality BC

Excellence in health care means creating an equitable system that is co-designed with patients, families, and caregivers. It means delivering value by achieving outcomes that matter to patients.

Tracey Sherin

Chief Executive Officer, Saskatchewan’s Health Quality Council 

We are very happy to see two leading pan-Canadian organizations joining their efforts in support of real reform and national leadership in health policy.

Pierre-Gerlier Forest, PhD, FCAHS

Dr. Danielle Martin