Annual Report 2014 | Page 38

“ Ultimately, the College will have a mechanism to measure and understand how educational activities contribute to changes in behaviour. assessing and enhancing physician competence to achieve our ultimate vision of quality professionals. We are now focusing our energies on integrating and coordinating physician education across all College committees and programs to ensure consistency with respect to physicians needs assessment, educational activities, data collection, outcome and reporting. Ultimately, the College will have a mechanism to measure and understand how educational activities contribute to changes in behaviour. Why is this important? Well, it allows us to provide guidance for the identification of physician needs; it allows us to then address those needs consistently across all processes; and it ensures that identified needs are incorporated into educational programs at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. It also allows us to demonstrate to stakeholders the effectiveness of our educational approaches. You will have already read about our work on the Quality Management Partnership (QMP) in Dialogue and in the earlier pages of this annual report. We are extremely proud of this initiative’s collaborative approach to ensure quality of care across facilities. The QMP is a joint effort with Cancer Care Ontario to look at the delivery of mammography, colonoscopy, and pathology with the goal of ensuring quality and consistency wherever these services are provided. As more services move from hospital into the community, the focus on provincial quality initiatives is anticipated to continue with expansion with other clinical areas. Consistent with our strategic priority of ensuring physician competence, via our physician assessment program and oversight of clinics, this work will continue to be important to ensuring a healthy system. 36 ” The public trust component of our vision can be achieved if the College is accountable and transparent. Our Transparency Initiative was prompted by a growing recognition that access to more information may assist members of the public in choosing physicians, enhance accountability, and better inform any evaluation of the performance of regulation of the profession. Extensive external consultation has been crucial to the success of Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the implementation and as we move forward with the next phase of this important project, we will again be seeking your input. Quality data is a key enabler of the QMP, Education and Transparency strategies. This initiative represents a fundamental re-evaluation of how the College collects, manages, uses and releases data in order to support our strategic initiatives. In addition to capturing data to improve processes, this initiative will shift the College’s focus to analysis that will inform practice improvement, demonstrate program effectiveness and contribute to a healthy system. We look forward to reporting on our progress on these initiatives throughout the next three years of our plan. However, it is worth pointing out that while these strategic initiatives will focus on achievement of our vision, we will also be initiating other important activities. Over the next three years, we will continue to address important matters such as Infection Control and Opioid Prescribing. In closing, I would like to thank all of you for your cooperation and feedback as we continue to move the College forward. None of our advances would have been possible without the thoughtful participation of the profession, the public, government and other health-care organizations. COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS OF ONTARIO