2024 Agenda

Health care in Canada is under enormous pressure and ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option. It will take daring leaders with a vision to drive change to create a reconstructed health care system capable of meeting the needs of Canadians today and in the future.

In this inspiring and personal talk, former federal health minister and best-selling author, Dr. Jane Philpott, shares her bold plan for a healthier Canada with lessons from her book, “Health for All: A doctor’s prescription for a healthier Canada,” that demonstrate courageous leadership in action.

Nurses make the majority of regulated healthcare providers, but many are struggling and leaving – or planning to leave – the profession. This would place a massive burden on patient care as struggle with an aging population in more need of healthcare.

One initiative was appointing a National Chief Nursing Officer to find solutions to these challenges.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• What challenges we are seeing across the country, where there are differences and where are the similarities
• And while leadership matters, what specific ways can leaders improve nurse retention and wellbeing
• What innovations are we seeing around the country that could be applied quickly and effectively

Every leader has a different leadership style. Depending on the organization’s culture, many styles can be effective.

Working in small groups, attendees will discuss how they are leading at their organization, and where they are seeing their best successes.

After the discussion, we will identify the 3 key drivers to success.

Smaller and Mid Sized Hospitals, and particularly rural and remote hospitals, are struggling to maintain services closer to their patients. We know that the status quo is not sustainable, and experimenting and finding new solutions to our challenges in paramount if we are to ensure a strong healthcare system.

In this interactive session, there will be a discussion of how leaders can assess alignment with your partners, examples of partnerships that are working – and some that haven’t – and finally delving into medical governance and board’s role in shaping these partnerships.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Taking the initiative and building partnerships that align with your cultures
• Addressing the challenges of governance and leadership structures
• Building trust between partners and patients
• Working with your board and addressing their concerns
• The role of medical governance and understanding how much control to take or relinquish

Wait times for treatment continue to be a concern for patients, providers and politicians. Backlogs only grew larger during Covid. However, we have made some headway over the past couple of years.

Horizon Health in NB has made huge inroads in clearing waits lists for hip and knee replacements. In this session, we will discuss the strategy and execution for delivering surgical services more effectively.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How to assess and recognize where the services challenges lie, and how to develop and plan of action
• How to execute on a large-scale initiative, engaging physicians, nurses, the Ministry, and the public with finite resources
• What were the success factors that had to biggest impact, and what would be done differently
• How Horizon Health is applying these learnings to other health care delivery challenges

The healthcare industry is under pressure to deliver high-quality care while controlling costs. From innovation hubs to tech start ups we are seeing partnerships at various scales take hold across the country.

Explore how you can identify the right partners, and leverage partnerships to overcome declining budgets with solutions that align with your goals of providing innovative patient care.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Understand the current financial landscape of hospitals and healthcare providers and the urgent need for innovative revenue generation strategies
• The benefits of innovation hubs and their expanding role in healthcare financial models
• Where and how to find partners to work with, and how to capitalize on their expertise
• Opportunities from small to large scale organizations, and what to expect from start to maturity
• Considerations for moving forward include a Streamlined Revenue Cycle Management, enhanced patient engagement, expanded services and capabilities

One of the pillars of healthcare is providing crucial care to patients where they live. From substance use disorders, diabetes counselling and primary care services, to helping people age in place, and just providing a sense of community and purpose in their lives, community care fills an large role in our healthcare system.

Hospitals and community care groups are essential to a healthy community, but how does an effectively integrated system operate?

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How health care leaders should see community health, and where can it excel within Canada’s healthcare system
• Creative initiatives spearheaded by Kensington Health, and the benefits of smaller organizations
• Where the greatest challenges lie – and how community health is addressing them

The challenges facing health care leaders today are daunting – access to quality care, fragmentation of services, health inequities, workforce pressures, increasing rates of preventable harm, threats to planetary health. With this, new data-driven, innovative approaches are needed to shape the next era of quality, which we call Quality 5.0. This new era requires a change in approach at all levels of the system in order for teams to come together to make people-centred, integrated care a reality in every community.

Embedded in Quality 5.0 is the premise is that there is no quality without a healthy competent workforce. This session will explore ways in which a data driven approach to understanding issues facing our workforce can help drive change and improve outcomes. The HSO Global Workforce Survey™ is a new tool that will be used by every hospital and health system across the country as part of Accreditation Canada’s updated QMentum Global program.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How data-driven strategies can create a stable and thriving health care workforce, ultimately enhancing the safety and quality of care
• How this survey will assess metrics on workload, stress levels, burnout, trust in management, psychological and cultural safety, incident reporting, and workplace violence
• How health care organizations and governments can leverage this tool for benchmarking and driving improvements

At this point in the agenda we will have covered a tremendous amount of material through presentations and discussions. This session is an opportunity for you to work with your colleagues in table groups to help make sense of all we have covered.

You will be discussing 4 questions.

• What are your key take-aways from this conference?
• As you listened to the presenters and your colleagues what gave you a feeling of hope?
• As you listened to the presenters and your colleagues what gave you a feeling of concern?
• What new actions are you going to take when you go back to work?

We will give you a simple process to priority rank each of the first three questions. In plenary we will do a quick debrief of one or two tables on each question. We will also collect notes for a summary conference brief.