Abstract
Background: Primary care leadership is central to a truly integrated health care system. Juggling leadership and clinical duties is challenging for any health professional. For women, who make up the majority of primary care providers, family responsibilities add another layer of duties, making shared leadership positions (co-CEO, co-chair) a viable and attractive option to take on larger leadership roles in health system redesign.
Approach: To achieve better integrated care, Primary Care Networks evolved across Canada in the last 5 years to strengthen primary care partnerships with the acute care and community sectors. We will share examples of three Canadian geographies where primary care co-leadership executive roles in Toronto, Ontario, and Victoria, British Columbia, have empowered strong primary care leadership using a distributive leadership model at integrated care design tables, both in east and west Canada. We will highlight the top five key features ¹ of successful shared leadership, particularly for women physicians -who are a growing percentage in the healthcare workforce- and frontline community family physician leaders, who do not traditionally have equal access to leadership training. Different, but complementary skill sets, a shared vision and common values, a clear commitment to leading together, and excellent communication including conflict resolution skills define successful co-chairs.
Results: Creating opportunities for shared leadership engages more community primary care clinicians, particularly women, to take on leadership positions in integrated care systems that are just emerging across Canada, and thereby increasing the diversity and the community perspectives within integrated care. Common success factors include a dyadic leadership team between an administrative director and a medical director, and we share here the additional benefits of a shared co-medical director position. Our experiences have allowed us to develop comprehensive, cohesive and time manageable roles to ensure continued participation and professional fulfillment while ensuring that the primary care voice contributes and leads meaningfully towards the design of more integrated care.
Implications: The importance of primary care involvement in integrated care design is well studied. Ensuring that primary care physician leadership is meaningful and manageable, while continuing frontline clinical work, is challenging, and building leadership structures that follow a shared leadership model will help promote and empower primary care voices, especially by women family physicians.
Reference:
Feigen, MA, Jenkins, M, Warendt, A. Is it time to consider Co-CEOs. Harvard Business Review, July-August 2022. [cited 2024, Oct 15]. Available at: https://hbr.org/2022/07/is-it-time-to-consider-co-ceos