PHC Quality Symposium June 2019

**This page is no longer active. Please head to PHCQuality.ca for current quality and practice support information and resources for primary health care providers and teams**

Primary Health Care Quality Symposium, June 3 2019

Primary Health Care and the Department of Family Practice hosted a one-day symposium focused on quality and measurement in collaborative family practice teams. The educational opportunity featured quality leaders in large-scale change in primary health care, and built awareness, commitment and best practice in quality with a focus, in part, on patient attachment and access at the family practice level in Nova Scotia.

SYMPOSIUM SUMMARY REPORT: Enhancing Accessibility and Supporting Quality: A Symposium for Collaborative Family Practice Teams (PDF Download)

Following the Symposium, the Canadian Foundation of Healthcare Improvement co-hosted a roundtable with NSHA to facilitate an in-depth exhange of learnings related to leading quality in primary health care. The following report provides an overview of the roundable, highlights key discussion themes and actionable next steps.

ROUNDTABLE BRIEFING REPORT: Briefing Report: Health System Improvement Roundtable (PDF Download)

The following Symposium presentations can support your and your team on your improvement journey:

Keynote: Leading transformative change in primary health care (Jim Easton, Care UK): Viewing General Practice as the bedrock of the NHS, Jim Easton gives an overview of what Care UK is doing to lead change within the organization and reflects on why change is both important and difficult. Jim compares the “museum” method to the “raising kids” method as two ways of protecting primary care (skip to 11:14).

Spotlight: QI successes in Nova Scotia’s primary health care system

  • Virtual Primary Care in Digby: Video and PDF
  • Improved Access – Westville Medical Clinic: Video and PDF
  • Weymouth Group Medical Visits: Video and PDF

Show and tell: Collaborative family practice team quality improvements

Keynote: Learnings from Scotland’s quality improvement experience (Laura Allison, NHS Education for Scotland): The NHS has Quality Improvement embedded as a strategy in what they do. Laura Alison speaks to NHS Scotland's journey over the past 10 years and what they do now.

QI basics 1: Setting quality aims and planning tests of change: 

  • The Scottish Improvement Journey framework (2:21)
  • John P. Kotter’s 8 steps for creating change (4:47)
  • Technical tools to help understand the system (12:58)
  • Constructing an aim statement (16:03)

QI basics 2: Developing and refining your aim statement: 

  • Driver Diagrams (8:06)
  • Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles (16:22)
  • Deciding on scale for your PDSA cycle (22:46)
  • Video
  • PDF - see QI basics 1 PDF above

Keynote: Learnings from the Alberta quality framework, including system performance monitoring and reporting (Andrew Neuner, HCQ of Alberta): Andrew Neuner discusses the use of information in health care, and ways in which data can be applied differently to understand how patients are using the health system. Jump to 24:12 to see a demo of what Alberta uses in primary care.

QI basics 3: Developing your indicators: The importance of measuring your indicators to assess if you are reaching your intended outcome. Three types of improvement measures are assessed (7:34).