In Wayne Kondro's article1 about our report to Health Canada on governance for patient safety,2 Ross Baker suggests that a national patient safety agency probably isn't feasible in Canada because jurisdiction over health care is fractured. But surely that doesn't mean it is not worth doing.
It did not take very long for either the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) or the Health Council of Canada to be set up. Given that the Canadian Patient Safety Institute already exists, changing its name to the Canadian Patient Safety Agency, changing its position within the Health Canada organizational chart and clarifying its mandate should not be difficult. The main point is that Canada, like other countries, has a patient safety problem of sufficient magnitude to deserve a substantive national response. The current agenda for patient safety is itself fragmented and piecemeal precisely because there is no guiding agency to coordinate the work being done.
The PHAC was set up because of the SARS crisis in Toronto, the Walkerton problem and the threat of other infections (e.g., avian flu), none of which has had the impact that adverse events have every day in Canada. Its mandate is to provide, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, a coordinated response to these threats. To date there appears to be little concern over the complexities of PHAC's relationships with other jursidictional bodies.
It seems to us that if there is a will to create a more comprehensive agency to tackle the problem of adverse events, a way can be found to do so. We do our patients and their families a disservice if we fail to ensure, to the degree possible, patient safety in our hospitals and other health care facilities and programs.