At PHSA, we want every patient to feel safe and confident in their care.
Our Integrated Quality & Safety Strategy brings staff, including medical staff, and patient partners together to make care safer, more inclusive, and higher quality—every day, in every setting.
Read the full PHSA Integrated Quality and Safety Strategy for more details and examples of key projects.
Quality and safety are at the heart of PHSA’s commitment to providing the best possible care for every person. Through the Integrated Quality & Safety Strategy, teams work together across all PHSA programs and services to strengthen care, reduce harm, and improve outcomes. This shared approach helps ensure patients, families, caregivers, and communities receive safe, high-quality, and person-centered care every day.
We’re strengthening how quality and safety are overseen across PHSA, so issues are tracked, addressed, and measured consistently.
What this means for you:
- There is now one clear quality & safety strategy for our programs
- Leaders across PHSA are clear on quality & safety governance and accountability structures
- The strategy helps staff see how their daily work connects to safer, higher-quality care
Details of project activities and status related to this goal are on page 9 of the strategy.
We are creating a culture where staff learn from every event and quickly use that knowledge to improve care.
What this means for you:
- Best practices for safety will be consistently applied, no matter where you receive care
- When an incident is reported, we conduct a review to better understand what happened, implement recommendations and share lessons learned to ensure similar incidents don't happen again
- Staff are being trained in the skills and tools they need to lead quality improvements
- We are working to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and being into quality and safety work
Details of project activities and status related to this goal are on page 11 of the strategy.
We are committed to eliminating racism and creating care environments that are safe for everyone—patients, families, staff, and providers.
What this means for you:
- Staff and providers take part in cultural safety and anti-racism learning
- Leaders act on issues of racism, equity, and inclusion—so patients and staff report safer, more respectful experiences
We are making sure patient and family voices shape how care is delivered and improved.
What this means for you:
- People-centred care best practices are used across PHSA
- Care teams have the tools and support to partner with you in your care
- We’re building new relationships with community organizations to strengthen trust and engagement
You are an important part of your care team. Ask questions and speak up if something doesn’t make sense to you or is unclear.
Details of project activities and status related to this goal are on page 17 of the strategy. Additional details of work occurring across PHSA can be found on the
Patient & Family Engagement webpage.
We are improving how data is collected, shared, and used across the health system to guide safety and quality improvements.
What this means for you:
- Meaningful indicators track progress on safety and quality goals
- Information about patient safety events informs timely action and is shared with other programs, so improvements can spread across PHSA
Details of project activities and status related to the goal are on page 20 of the strategy.
For patients and families, our Quality & Safety Strategy is about more than internal goals. It means safer care and fewer preventable harms. It means a stronger voice in shaping your care and more inclusive, culturally safe health services. Most importantly, it shows that PHSA is an organization dedicated to learning and improving every day, so your care keeps getting better.
Measuring impact
The Integrated Quality & Safety Strategy impacts our organization at different levels. The evaluation also requires a multi-modal approach.
We evaluate at the following levels:
- Project level: each project is evaluated to ensure its intended outcomes are met and identify improvement opportunities for the project team.
- Goal level: Each goal is evaluated to determine if the objectives and key results have been met. The key results at this level are bigger than any one project. This evaluation is influenced by strategy projects and other initiatives within the organization.
- Strategy level: The overall impact of the strategy is evaluated against two strategy outcomes which are influenced by many different factors:
- Strengthen our culture of quality
- Improve the quality of care
These outcomes are the ultimate reasons behind the work. To measure progress towards these outcomes we'll analyze data from a wide range of sources including:
- HSO Global Workforce Survey
- Patient Safety Culture Survey Pulse Check
- The Quality and Safety Indicator Reports
- Patient-reported experience and outcome measures
- Patient Safety and Learning System
Our focus remains on continuous improvement and working with our key partners in this work including staff, patients and families. We'll ensure the strategy evolves to meet emerging challenges and opportunities.
Ongoing engagement with key partners will be central as we continue to
- Refine our approach
- Update the strategy
- Identify new projects
- Drive meaningful, system-wide improvements
- Evaluate the impact of work
- Improve quality and safety of care of PHSA
