Tools for Primary Health Care Reform

CHSPR’s 29th annual health policy conference, March 9-10, 2017, at the Pinnacle Hotel Vancouver Harbourfront, explored the promise, potential, and (real) progress on primary health care reform in BC and Canada. One of the pre-conference workshops was titled Tools for Primary Health Care Reform. During this three-hour workshop, presenters and participants talked about their experiences in primary health care reform and the tools that they have used or would like to have at their disposition. The “toolbox” below includes links to a number of tools for scale and spread of primary care innovations, and related items including patient engagement and practice reports.

Tools from the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement (CFHI)

Readiness to receive assessment tool
This tool will help the leaders of a site wishing to receive an innovation from elsewhere to assess their readiness.

Readiness to spread assessment tool
This tool will help the leaders of a practice to assess whether their innovation is ripe and ready for being spread to other sites.

Accelerating Healthcare Improvement: Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement’s Assessment Tool
The purpose is tool is to assist health care leaders in assessing their organization’s capacity for undertaking improvement initiatives.

Patient engagement tools
CFHI’s Patient Engagement Resource Hub includes a diversity of patient engagement tools that can be searched by keyword, category, language etc.

Tools from Health Quality Ontario (HQO)

Patient engagement tools and resources
Includes resources both for patients, families, and caregivers, as well as health care providers. They include both tips and guidelines for planning, doing, and measuring engagement and also templates to be used for such activities.

Practice reports
HQO has created customized reports for the primary care, long term care and hospital sectors. Using existing administrative health databases, these confidential reports give physicians data about their practice, and share change ideas to help drive quality improvement.

Other tools from HQO
Other tools and reports from HQO such as yearly reports, and specialized reports (including one on primary care), and quality standards can be accessed via their website.