NTF Reports
The work of the National Task Force (NTF) has produced three distinct pieces of work:
- The draft NTF report entitled "Three Missions...One Future - Optimizing the Performance of Canada's Academic Health Sciences Centres";
- An Environmental Scan report; and
- A case study describing the current state of AHSCs and future issues.
Recognizing that the health system is experiencing rapid change in times of economic challenge, the purpose of this report is to ensure that Canada's Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) are in a position to reach their potential and optimize their performance. This, however, presents both challenges and opportunities. Changes in governance and long-standing concerns about alignment of missions and resources have all put strains on the AHSC. At the same time, new approaches to patient care, teaching and research that are changing the traditional AHSC model offer the potential for significant benefits to patients and society as a whole.
Click HERE to download the Executive Summary only.
May 2010
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The Environmental Scan comprised three activities: (1) a report on attitudes collected through an e-survey of health care sector leaders from across Canada. These included senior members of the institutional, academic, government and research communities. Respondents provided input in four areas: patient care and services delivery; education and training; research and innovation, and AHSC governance structure; (2) twenty-five key informant interviews undertaken to generate more in-depth understanding of the e-survey findings; and (3) an international literature review covering roughly 1,000 articles, reports and web-sites. Summary abstracts of 170 of the most relevant documents published between 1994 and 2009 were prepared. The focus was on eight over-arching themes: accessibility; accountability; excellence; innovation and knowledge transfer; interdependence and collaboration; inter-disciplinary; quality; and sustainability.
January 2010
The case study report leveraged a series of structured interviews with key stakeholder to help assess AHSC models across the country, identifying both similarities and differences. It looks at various governance models between universities and healthcare delivery organizations, and at the mechanisms between the AHSCs and governments through which the integrated mandate of the AHSC is delivered. It also provides insight on leadership, management structures and processes, and how decisions on joint faculty and clinical appointments are made.
The report also highlights challenges in delivering on the AHSC mandate, including those related to: distributed education models; delivery of care and health human resources; emerging issues related to education and training, and research mandates. The report also identifies a number of provincial, territorial and federal challenges related to the resourcing of AHSCs.
January 2010