To everyone committed to the pursuit of healthcare excellence:
You’ve come to the right place. Healthcare Excellence Canada is a new organization with a relentless focus on improving healthcare, with – and for – everyone in Canada, connecting the power of people and evidence. It’s about shaping the future of healthcare quality and safety. Together.
Working with many of you as the Canadian Patient Safety Institute and Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, we achieved a LOT. Hundreds of teams and thousands of people in every province and territory helped to move the dial on patient safety and healthcare quality. But there is much more to do. Unintended harm in the health sector is the third leading cause of death in Canada, and there are gaps in patient experience and outcomes, care team well-being, and value.
So we teamed up to create a new organization with greater capacity to support our partners. We promise to work with you to deliver measurable, widespread and lasting improvement in patient safety and all the dimensions of healthcare excellence. Together, we are more than a single organization. We are a movement of people across the country committed to patient safety and quality – staff, Board members, coaches and faculty; patient and essential care partners; health and social service providers; governments; and many other people and organizations.
Never has this work been more important. Even before the pandemic, Canada faced persistent challenges achieving safe, high-quality healthcare for all, and COVID-19 has surfaced gaps in both care and equity. It is also shining a light on creative, highly effective responses to needs, and we have an opportunity to expand the reach of these proven innovations so more people can benefit.
In starting to talk to people across the country to explore their priorities and how we can work together, we are hearing:
- Be bold in actions to change the system
- Be clear and focused about our purpose
- Look to the future
- Strengthen diversity and inclusivity
- Share expertise and guide others
- Be agile and move quickly
In the meantime, many familiar CPSI and CFHI programs will continue in 2021 and 2022 as new programs are rolled out. Across our work, we will seek to emphasize equity and inclusion, patient, family, and caregiver partnership, as well as supporting the people who work in healthcare.
I invite you to join us. Because we believe everyone in Canada deserves excellent healthcare. And we are not there yet.
Explore ways we can work together here.
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Jennifer Zelmer, President and CEO
Healthcare Excellence Canada
