Collaboration Towards Transformative Action for Integrated Primary Care in Canada

Background: Across Canada, an estimated 5.9 million people lack access to a primary health care provider, underscoring persistent fragmentation within the health system. While federal provincial territorial agreements, remuneration reforms, and investments in team based care signal progress, these efforts alone are insufficient to achieve seamless, equitable, and integrated primary health care. National organizations hold critical levers that can accelerate this transformation, but only if their work is aligned, coordinated, and strategically mobilized. Recognizing this imperative, four national partners the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC), Health Standards Organization (HSO), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR IHSPR) have initiated a collaborative approach to drive system level integration and improve population health.

 

Approach: This initiative brings together complementary mandates to strengthen the primary health care ecosystem. CMA works to unite physicians and shape policy to improve health system performance; HEC catalyzes improvement through capability building and the spread of innovation; HSO develops national standards and assessment programs that embed quality and safety across care; and CIHR IHSPR drives evidence-informed health system transformation through research and knowledge mobilization.

Together, these organizations are coordinating strategies, aligning priorities, and leveraging their respective tools, policy influence, standards development, research investment, and improvement expertise, to accelerate integrated primary care reform. The presentation will share the methods underpinning this collaboration, including joint planning structures, shared problem definition processes, and mechanisms for incorporating patient, caregiver, and provider perspectives.

 

 

 

Results:Early insights demonstrate that national level alignment can meaningfully strengthen efforts to advance integrated primary health care. Collaboration has surfaced opportunities to reduce duplication, enhance synergy between improvement and regulatory levers, and accelerate the application of evidence into policy and practice. Engagement with patient and caregiver partners reinforces the need for integrated system supports spanning macro, meso, and micro levels, to achieve the quintuple aim and build toward a learning health system.

 

 Participants across the initiative emphasize the value of cross organizational coordination in addressing structural barriers, fostering shared priorities, and supporting provinces and territories in implementing sustainable, patient centred primary health care reforms.

 

Implications: This work highlights the essential role of national organizations in enabling system wide transformation and advancing equitable access to primary care. It demonstrates that coordinated leadership, evidence informed strategies, and meaningful engagement with patients and caregivers are foundational to achieving integrated care. Next steps include expanding multi partner initiatives, deepening alignment around national priorities, and exploring how this collaborative model can be adapted in other countries pursuing comprehensive primary health care reform. The presentation will offer practical insights into how aligned national efforts can help translate promising policies and innovations into meaningful improvements in care delivery.