Virtual Care Together

A partnership between Healthcare Excellence Canada and Canada Health Infoway, Virtual Care Together supports healthcare providers with tools and training to deliver safe, high-quality virtual care.

Virtual care can improve how we provide healthcare across Canada, often as a complement to in-person care. The pandemic has proven the value of this method of care delivery, and patients and providers want to continue using it. According to the 2021 National Survey of Canadian Physicians, most physicians believe virtual care improves access and enables quality, efficient care for their patients. But to optimize their use of virtual care, clinicians need the right tools and training.

Virtual Care Together design collaborative

The Virtual Care Together design collaborative brought together 25 teams across Canada to prepare, implement and evaluate virtual care tools and resources that focused on community-based primary care. Between October 2021 and March 2022, teams tested and refined supports needed for community-based primary care providers to implement safe and high-quality virtual care services, and informed content development for a toolkit for new and experienced users of virtual care.

Care providers who participated in the collaborative include physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, physiotherapists and other providers, with experience in various settings including primary care, chronic disease prevention/management and health promotion, mental health and addictions, rehabilitation care, cancer care, health equity (e.g., groups in vulnerable settings), specialty care and emergency care.

Virtual Care Together Toolkit

The Clinician Change Virtual Care Toolkit shares information and resources to support clinicians with the tools they need to provide safe, high quality virtual care. It can be used by clinicians and support staff who are new or experienced users of virtual care.

Inside the toolkit you’ll find:

• Streamlined information from trusted sources that can be used to plan for and improve virtual care services offered via different modalities, such as phone, video, secure messaging or remote patient monitoring.

• Virtual care evaluation resources that can be consulted to inform plans and approaches for evaluating virtual care services and identifying areas for improvement.

• Additional tools and resources that were identified through an extensive environmental scan and stakeholder outreach activities.

The Clinician Change Virtual Care Toolkit was created by clinicians and virtual care experts who helped select key resources, published by trusted sources, and extract and synthesize information and evidence from these resources.

More about Virtual Care Together

Virtual Care Together is part of the Change Management Program, which also includes the Digital Health Learning Program. Together, these programs help ensure that providers and other members of the care team, including patients and their essential care partners, are well-equipped to help transform care — so more people can benefit from safe and high-quality virtual care.

Virtual Care Together supports Healthcare Excellence Canada’s efforts to shift care closer to home with safe transitions, and is one of Canada Health Infoway’s initiatives to develop and expand virtual care solutions across the country.