CPhA Welcomes Recommendations from Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation

The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) welcomes the recommendations of the recently released report – Unleashing Innovation: Excellent Healthcare for Canada – submitted by the Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation. We share the Panel’s view that accelerating health care innovation is key to achieving better care, better health and better value. 

The Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation mandate was to identify the most promising areas of innovation in Canada and internationally that have the potential to sustainably reduce growth in health spending while leading to improvements in the quality and accessibility of care.

In terms of priorities, CPhA believes governments should focus on increasing investment in innovation on the front lines and, specifically, on the Panel’s recommendations in the key areas of patient engagement, interprofessional collaboration and digital health.

Better health care starts with putting the patient first. The Panel’s focus on innovative approaches to patient-centred care is essential to the long-term sustainability and integrity of the system. Improving the patient experience includes adopting more effective and efficient care models. Canadian pharmacists are providing innovative care models, such as in the areas of primary care, chronic disease management and health promotion that result in better patient outcomes and better value for our health care dollar. 

At a time when most information in our country is shared electronically, the majority of prescribed medication information is still shared via handwritten prescriptions. The lack of interoperable e-health technology in Canada, such as e-prescribing, threatens patient care and safety. E-prescribing would provide increased accuracy in the quality of prescriptions, and could provide practitioners with information on drug costs and evidence-based drug therapy, leading to cost-effective prescribing and improved patient safety – in short, a more sustainable health system that offers more effective care for patients.

In terms of creating value through innovation, CPhA believes that the focus needs to be broader than the Panel’s recommendations on drug costs; which account for only 8 per cent of total public health care expenditures. In addition, when it comes to the priority for drug policy in Canada, CPhA believes the focus needs to be on ensuring all Canadian have access to the medications they need to be healthy—which is the goal of CPhA’s Pharmacare 2.0 initiative.

CPhA looks forward to working with governments and discussing with other health care providers how the frontline expertise and knowledge of pharmacists can be leveraged and effectively utilized to improve the quality and accessibility of care for all Canadians.

The G4, made up of Canada's largest pan-Canadian health organizations, including the Canadian Pharmacists Association, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Medical Association, and HealthCareCAN also released a statement welcoming the overall direction set by the Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation's final report.