An important part of SSC’s work includes supporting and growing specialist’s quality and innovation (Q&I) ideas. This work has been going on for more than two years. Initially, $8 million funded about 20 Q&I projects, and now $15 million is available for another round of Q&I projects.
We took lessons learned during our first round of funding to make sure the second round was more inclusive. We wanted decision-makers and influencers involved at the beginning to ensure support and resources would be available to bring great ideas to fruition. We involved health authorities, appropriate section heads, the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders from the beginning.
An Expression of Interest (EOI) call for submissions went out in April 2014 and BC specialists submitted over 300 ideas. Now in stage 2 of the EOI process, forty-four are being developed into full proposals to be submitted by the end of March 2015. SSC is making up to $10,000 available to support the proposal development phase.
This Quality and Innovation funding recognizes the important contributions specialists make to the health care system, and provides an opportunity to share their solutions for system improvement. The submissions being developed into full proposals straddle a number of areas, including Emergency, Mental Health, Geriatrics, Palliative Care, Pooled Referrals, Maternity and Youth in Transition to name a few. Often, projects involved the use of multidisciplinary teams and submissions came from all Health Authorities.
The next stage will be evaluating the full proposal at the end of March 2015. If you’d like more information, please contact Christina Beck at cbeck@doctorsofbc.ca or Laura Anderson at landerson@doctorsofbc.ca
