News

MUHC takes leadership role in health policy development

Published: 30 May 2007

The Director General and CEO of the McGill University Health Centre, Dr. Arthur T. Porter, announced today that the MUHC is establishing an Institute for Strategic Analysis and Innovation (ISAI) to promote health care innovations.

Said Senator David Angus, chairman of the board of directors of the MUHC, “As a major Canadian academic health centre, we have a significant role to play in framing and evaluating public policies that contribute to effective sustainable health care systems.”

“We are setting an ambitious goal for the MUHC-ISAI,” said Dr. Porter. “We want to provide opportunities to develop integrated analysis that includes how best to use new technologies; the organizational challenges to the health system; and changes in the social and policy environment such as demographic changes and growing questions about both the cost and quality of health care.”

He announced two projects that he said would set the tone for future work at the MUHC-ISAI. These are a scholar-in-residence program and a strategic innovation forum to involve public and private sector policy makers, practitioners and consumer groups in a discussion on building a sustainable health care system.

The first MUHC-ISAI scholar in residence will be the Honourable Bernard Lord, former Premier of New Brunswick. Lord will work with the Institute to develop a number of strategic papers on health care policy, focusing on equipping citizens to take control of their own health care management. “Bernard Lord’s experience makes him an ideal candidate to help us encompass this broad spectrum of issues involved in ensuring population health,” said Dr. Porter.

Currently Senior Counsel in the Montreal office of McCarthy Tétrault, Lord said he welcomed the opportunity to work with the MUHC-ISAI. “I am pleased that the MUHC has decided to create this kind of ‘big picture’ institute that will encourage integrated and novel approaches to support Canadians living healthier, longer.”

The MUHC-ISAI is also partnering with Parkhurst Publishing, a leading Canadian medical-publishing company, to create the strategic innovation forum for health care. The forum will include a number of round-table consultations based on papers solicited and published through MUHC-ISAI and culminating in a consensus-building conference in the winter of 2008. “Our partnership with Parkhurst is a model for the kinds of partnerships the ISAI wishes to pursue,” said Dr. Porter. “Also, this first forum will focus on the future of the Canada Health Act. This theme dovetails in a very timely way with discussions that have been initiated recently by the Government of Quebec and other governments on building a sustainable health care system.”

“The goal is to bring stakeholders in the health field together to explore approaches that respond to current needs and consider the full range of possibilities available for the future,” said the corporate editorial director for Parkhurst, Susan Usher. Parkhurst will manage a website for the MUHC-ISAI, co-ordinate publications and organize the round-tables and final conference.

The MUHC-ISAI will be independently funded. Financial support will be solicited from government and private sector stakeholders as well as through specific bequests to the MUHC Foundation.

About the McGill University Health Centre
The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is a comprehensive academic health institution with an international reputation for excellence in clinical programs, research and teaching. The MUHC is a merger of five teaching hospitals affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University — the Montreal Children’s, Montreal General, Royal Victoria, and Montreal Neurological hospitals, as well as the Montreal Chest Institute. Building on the tradition of medical leadership of the founding hospitals, the goal of the MUHC is to provide patient care based on the most advanced knowledge in the health care field, and to contribute to the development of new knowledge.

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