Quality legislation: lessons for Ontario from abroad

Abstract

While the Excellent Care for All Act, 2010 (ECFA Act) provides a comprehensive approach to stimulating quality improvement in healthcare, there are other examples of legislations articulating strategies aimed at the same goal but proposing different approaches. This paper reviews quality of care legislations in the Netherlands, the United States, England and Australia, compares those pieces of legislation with the ECFA Act and suggests lessons for Ontario in planning the next stages of its healthcare quality strategy. Notable among the commonalities that the EFCA Act shares with the selected examples of legislation are mandatory reporting of performance results at an organizational level and furthering quality improvement, evidence generation and performance monitoring. However, the EFCA Act does not include any elements of restructuring or competition, unlike some of the other examples. Key to successful transformation of the Ontario healthcare system will be to propose a package of changes that will deal systematically with all aspects of transformation sought (including structural changes, payments systems and elements of competition), will garner support from all the actors, and will be implemented consistently and persistently. Benchmarking on the implementation and impact of reforms with the countries presented in this paper may be an additional important step. Quality of care is a key focus of health system reforms, and in recent years many countries in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including Canada, have developed strategies aimed at improving healthcare quality and patient safety (OECD 2010). Øvretveit and Klazinga propose that national strategies for quality of care can be targeted at different types of health system stakeholders: professionals, healthcare organizations, medical products and technologies, patients and financers (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe 2008). The generic elements of these strategies relate to legislation and regulation, monitoring and measurement; assuring and improving the quality and safety of individual healthcare services, and assuring and improving the quality of the healthcare system as a whole. Various combinations of quality improvement approaches (such as quality assessment, standards-based quality management, team problem solving, and patient and community participation) are suitable for these functions as part of the respective quality strategies.