Canada’s fragmented healthcare system is one of the most expensive among the OECD countries, yet the quality of its performance is mediocre at best. Canada lacks a system-wide healthcare strategy that brings together many individual federal, provincial, and territorial strategies into a comprehensive and coherent whole. Managing a Canadian Healthcare Strategy is a collection of ten policy research essays by leading Canadian and international scholars who address three important questions. First, if Canada had a unifying strategy, how would the country measure its success and monitor its performance? Second, who are the agents of change to bring about a Canadian system-wide strategy? Third, how can the jurisdictional realities of Canada’s political system be managed to bring about strategic reform? The final section in the volume explores ways to overcome the barriers and impediments that preoccupy Canadians’ concerns about healthcare. A companion volume to Toward a Healthcare Strategy for Canadians, the contributors to Managing a Canadian Healthcare Strategy turn to the critical importance of how necessary healthcare changes can be best implemented.

This collection is the result of a 2016 national leaders conference sponsored by Queen’s University to explore the prospects for a pan-Canadian healthcare innovation strategy. The conference themes were inspired by the 2015 report of the federally commissioned Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation, led by David Naylor, which examined how the federal government could support innovation. A Canadian Healthcare Innovation Agenda features original commissioned chapters from academics and healthcare leaders addressing a range of issues such as the meaning of healthcare innovation, how a national healthcare agency and investment fund could be governed, the need for big data and evidence, adding value through Canadian supply-chain management, overcoming regulatory barriers to innovation, policy innovations for indigenous, military and elderly populations, the role of medical professions in promoting innovation, education, and the development of medical innovators. The Canadian healthcare system is so fragmented that any thought of a system-wide strategy for healthcare innovation is considered a far-distant ideal at best. This book presents a contrary view, outlining an agenda for Canadian healthcare innovation. It shows that Canada does indeed have the building blocks for innovation, and concludes that the time to act is now.

Managing chronic disease in the twenty-first century.