Case Study
Healthcare Excellence Canada
Driving Patient Safety and Quality Care as a Hospital Board Member. HEC worked with Onlea to create a friendly change management resource that could be accessed for free and easily worked into the busy schedules of board members.
Driving Patient Safety and Quality Care as a hospital Board Member
Who is Healthcare Excellence Canada?
Not everyone receives safe and high-quality healthcare in Canada. There are challenges with access and cases where patients experience harm while in the care of hospitals and other medical institutions.
Healthcare Excellence Canada drives large-scale system change by working with healthcare organizations throughout the country to improve oversight, policy, and training.
The Challenge
Research done by HEC and related organizations has shown that medical institutions provide better care when their boards take an active role in promoting safety and quality.
Unfortunately, systemic conditions often hamper board participation in this aspect of their operations:
- High board member turnover, with new members often not confident in their ability to take an activity role in driving quality of care
- An existing culture of leaving quality-of-care discussions to doctors and subcommittees
- Concerns with straining relationships with institution leadership and medical staff
- Lack of knowledge about measuring and improving healthcare quality and safety
- Broad board mandates with little clarification on roles and responsibilities
HEC needed to improve the knowledge and confidence of incoming hospital board members in way that would empower them to drive meaningful improvements at their institutions
A previous attempt at developing an in-person training program was ultimately unsuccessful due to the combined challenges of creating an engaging learning experience for an audience of busy professionals who might be onboarding at any time of year and from anywhere in the country. HEC knew further initiatives would need to be accessible in their presentation and deliverable at scale.
Our Solution
HEC worked with Onlea to create a friendly change management resource that could be accessed for free and easily worked into busy schedules
Together, we transformed the material from the defunct in-person training program was updated and transformed into a digital learning course that could be included in the onboarding process for board, trustees, and senior leadership.
The new Effective Governance for Quality and Patient Safety program was developed as a self-directed program that could be taken at the learner’s own pace, and accessed any time through the HEC’s website. The content is available in both English and French. There are eight modules, each about an hour in length, and including text, graphics, videos, and a variety of downloadable resources. These modules were created in Articular Rise and uploaded as SCORM-compliant packages to the HEC’s learning management system, Brightspace.
To help build the new program, the development team also created two short promotional videos, one in each official language.
The Results
The final course was published in April 2024 and is available for free on the HEC website: Effective Governance for Quality and Patient Safety