Going far together: Healthcare collaborations for innovation and improvement in Canada.

Healthcare in Canada, as elsewhere, must adapt in order to better meet the needs of the chronically ill. Such adaptations are happening locally, but healthcare decision- and policy-makers require channels and mechanisms for sharing project outcomes and spreading or scaling up successful approaches. Without formal mechanisms, there is a risk of losing the rich knowledge produced by improvement projects; of compromising the efficient use of healthcare resources; and of negatively impacting the further distribution of potential outcomes and impacts. This paper profiles three Canadian collaborations, supported by the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement (CFHI), which supports healthcare leaders in working together to develop, share, implement, and sustain evidence-informed and systems solutions. The collaborations are team based and particularly relevant to patient engagement and chronic disease care. They illustrate early lessons on how collaborative partnerships, with a shared vision and ownership, can co-address multiple components, conditions and communities, using evidence-based approaches and embedding performance measurement and evaluation. They also demonstrate the role organizations such as CFHI can play in facilitating a collaborative approach to accelerating healthcare improvement within and across organizations or systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]