Canada West Health Leaders Conference 2026

Theme

Registration

Your conference registration includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, and unlimited beverages each day. It also includes canapés and beverages at the networking reception, along with access to all plenary and concurrent sessions. Any events labelled as "optional" may have an additional cost to include in your registration.

For any questions or clarifications, please contact conference@cchl-ccls.ca.

Registration Deadlines

Early bird registration deadline: September 4, 2026

Regular registration deadline: October 16, 2026

Member Rate

CCHL members receive a discount on the conference registration fee. Not a member yet? Join the College today for only $195 for the first year.

CCHL membership details available here.

Discounted Rates

*For the student rate, please send information on your current school enrolment to conference@cchl-ccls.ca.
**For the patient rate, please send information about the patient organization you represent to conference@cchl-ccls.ca.

Keynote Sessions

Rocky Ozaki - Founder & CEO, the NoW of Work | AI Aficionado

Rocky Ozaki is one of North America’s leading voices on the Future of Work, modern business transformation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He is a 3-time tech start-up Founder and the CEO of the NoW of Work, a consulting firm helping organizations create naturally innovative and agile teams that can thrive in these exponential times.

With over 100 keynotes delivered, Rocky blends strategic foresight with proprietary data and insights to encourage leaders to challenge all their assumptions of how to future-proof their organizations. His presentations are high-energy, a bit edgy and fun, all while jam-packed with practical insights for companies that want to lead - not follow - in this rapidly evolving world.

His blend of on-stage charisma, a futurist mindset, and decades of experience actually training and transforming companies, Rocky Ozaki is one of the most unique, credible and inspiring keynote speakers in the industry today.

The Future is NoW…are you ready?

Taylor Lindsay-Noel - Award-Winning Entrepreneur, Founder + CEO, Cup of Té

Taylor Lindsay-Noel is an award-winning entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. Fifteen years ago, she was a Canadian national gymnast, but in 2008, she had a devastating accident that changed the trajectory of her life.

Taylor is currently balancing her new-found career as a motivational speaker, disability advocate, council member of the Premier’s Council on Equality of Opportunity and owner of Cup of Té Luxury Loose Leaf Teas, which was featured on Oprah’s Favourite Things List 2020.

She was also announced as the Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Black Business and Professional Association Harry Jerome Awards, Canada’s most prestigious award celebrating black excellence.

Additionally, Taylor has become a rising star as a disability and accessibility influencer, amassing tens of thousands of followers across her social networks. Taylor utilizes her social media platforms to educate audiences about a range of topics, including business, entrepreneurship, accessibility and inclusion.

Sarah Wells - Olympian | Expert on Individual and Organizational Excellence

Olympian Sarah Wells inspires audiences to embrace excellence without limits. Her philosophy centres on the idea that excellence isn’t about perfection — it’s about breaking free from limiting beliefs and constantly striving to outperform who you were yesterday. Renowned for her practical strategies, compelling storytelling, and high energy delivery, Wells empowers audiences to find their own excellence, transform challenges into opportunities for growth, and achieve lasting success.

Wells doesn’t just talk about overcoming adversity, she hurdled it on the world’s biggest stage. An Olympic hurdler for Team Canada, Wells made her Olympic debut at the London 2012 Games. She had remarkably qualified for the Games after being sidelined for nine months with a stress fracture in her left femur. She went on to compete at the 2013 Summer Universiade, winning silver in the 4x400m relay. After being out for another six months with a reoccurrence of the stress fracture, she came back to capture her fourth Canadian title in 2015 and win a pair of medals at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto.

Today, Wells is an in-demand keynote speaker. Through her Olympic journey, plus racing across deserts, mountains, and international airports on The Amazing Race, she has proven again and again that grit, adaptability, and a little bit of laughter go a long way. She believes that when you dare to break the blueprint, chase crazy ideas, and focus on doing the small things exceptionally well, excellence becomes contagious, elevating not just your life but those around you.

Concurrent Program

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

10:30 - 11:45

1. What Outstanding Leaders See: Using Visual Storytelling to Reveal Healthcare Inequities and Leadership Excellence

Healthcare leaders are expected to make decisions that improve care, strengthen teams, and advance system performance. Yet many of the realities that matter most remain invisible in traditional reports, metrics, and planning processes. This interactive workshop explores how visual storytelling can help leaders identify, understand, and act on both persistent healthcare inequities and examples of outstanding leadership that deserve replication.

Drawing on a recent Photovoice study with immigrant and racialized caregivers of children on the autism spectrum, participants will examine how participant-generated photographs revealed important gaps between policy intent and lived experience, highlighting inequities that are often overlooked in system planning and decision-making. Participant photographs and narratives place patient and family voices at the centre of the discussion, ensuring that lived experience directly informs leadership learning and systems improvement.

The session will also present early findings from the CCHL National Conversation, a national visual storytelling initiative exploring photographs and stories that capture outstanding leadership in action, revealing behaviours that distinguish exceptional leaders and create positive impacts for patients, families, staff, and communities.

Through facilitated discussion and small-group activities, participants will analyze photographs, identify the leadership, system, and equity issues they illuminate, and explore how visual storytelling can be used as a practical tool for advocacy, engagement, organizational learning, innovation, quality improvement, and systems transformation. Participants will then apply these concepts to issues within their own organizations, identifying opportunities to make important challenges more visible and to celebrate successes worthy of broader adoption.

By integrating patient and family voices, equity, diversity, and inclusion considerations, and leadership development, this workshop demonstrates how visual storytelling can make important realities visible, helping leaders design more equitable, responsive, people-centred, and future-ready healthcare systems.

Participants will leave with concrete strategies for using visual storytelling to reveal what matters most and to mobilize action toward meaningful change.

Speakers:
Dr. Jaason Geerts, FCCHL - Vice-President, Research and Leadership Development, Canadian College of Health Leaders
Dr. Jesse Sam - Coordinator, Marketing and Communications, Canadian College of Health Leaders

2. Change First, Technology Second: Applying Structured Change Management with AI in a Real Healthcare Scenario

Most healthcare technology rollouts fail because of people, not the platform. MIT's 2025 research found 95 percent of generative AI pilots deliver no measurable impact, and the cause is organizational and behavioural, not technical. Yet only a small percent of transformation budgets goes to the human side of change. This workshop reverses the usual order. Change management comes first. AI comes second, supporting the change management process. Participants work through a real implementation scenario with proven methodologies and learn to match specific AI tools to specific change stages: building awareness, surfacing resistance, strengthening knowledge transfer, and sustaining adoption after going live via recognition and reinforcement. Equity and cultural safety are built in as design requirements, including staff with lower digital literacy. Participants leave with a change framework, an AI tool selection model, and one committed action for the next two weeks.

Speakers:
Ohad Eliyahu - Founder, Innovative Edge
Majid Nikouee - Programme Strategy Lead, University of Alberta

3. Political Savvy: Why Good Leaders Get Stuck - and How to Move What Matters

Healthcare leaders are operating in systems where decisions are rarely linear, authority is distributed, and the stakes, particularly for patients and families, are high. While expertise and strong values are essential, they are not sufficient to ensure progress. Work stalls, decisions are delayed, and initiatives lose traction, not because of lack of effort, but because leaders are unable to effectively navigate the relational and systemic dynamics that shape outcomes. Political savvy is often misunderstood as manipulation or self-interest. In practice, it is a disciplined leadership capability grounded in awareness, integrity, and intentional influence. It reflects core elements of the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework, particularly Leads Self, Engages Others, and Systems Transformation, by enabling leaders to understand themselves, build meaningful relationships, and navigate complexity to achieve results. Drawing on network science, this session introduces a practical, evidence-informed approach to understanding how influence flows in healthcare systems-through informal networks, not just formal hierarchy. Participants will explore how leaders can identify key influencers, navigate competing priorities, and activate relationships to accelerate decision-making and improve coordination of care. Through real-world scenarios and applied tools, participants will examine how gaps in political savvy contribute to delays, misalignment, and unintended impacts on patient and family experience-and how strengthening this capability supports more coordinated, timely, and person-centered care. Participants will leave with practical strategies to map networks, identify informal influencers, engage stakeholders, and move critical work forward with clarity and integrity.

Speaker:
Suzanne Fox, CHE - Founder, Fox Den Consulting

 4. Lightning Sessions: Leadership Collaborations

4.1 Unified Resilience: The Role of Risk Management Leadership as a Catalyst for Safety for Patients, Staff & Physicians in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit Environment

Amongst many roles, risk management leadership is pivotal in understanding and proactively mitigating risks that may impact the safety of patients, staff, physicians, and the healthcare organization. This presentation explores how the Risk Management team at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences (Ontario Shores) led a collaboration between internal clinical groups, Risk Management, along with Human Factors expertise from the Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC), to identify opportunities to improve the design of safer, more resilient Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) environments. This session highlights how risk leaders facilitated the gathering, analysis and prioritization of insights of frontline expertise, including psychiatrists, nurses, and Patient and Family Advisors (PFAs). This unified approach ensured that safety priorities, such as individualized patient care needs, respect, privacy, confidentiality, and environmental considerations, were grounded in both clinical reality and systemic risk mitigation. Attendees will learn how risk management can lead by design, using interprofessional collaboration to uncover systemic opportunities that remain hidden in departmental silos. This session integrates CCHL's foundational commitments by demonstrating how purpose-driven leadership creates cultures of psychological safety. By showcasing how this collaboration provided the insights to identify and prioritize areas of improvement for successful renovations and ongoing funding proposals, we offer lessons learned for leaders to develop cross-sector partnerships as a driver for sustainable, people-first transformation.

Learning Objectives

• Define the role of risk management leadership in brokering cross-sector partnerships and external collaborators.
• Understand how to align risk management, clinical, and human factors teams toward a shared vision of safety for patients, staff and physicians.
• Describe lessons acquired in operationalizing key learnings, including assessment of opportunities for improvement through process, workflow and environmental design, as well as budget and capital reinvestment considerations.

Speaker:
Laurel Cyr - Director, Enterprise Risk Management, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences

4.2 Secret Sauce: Lessons in Collaborative Decision Making and Collective Impact in Primary Care

Over two decades of primary care evolution in Calgary and Area has taught us one thing - change is the only constant. In this session, we explore the Calgary and Area story of collaborative leadership, collaborative governance, and collective action. All seven Calgary and Area Primary Care Networks (PCNs), along with other system partners, have grown from grassroots collective efforts to mandated collaboration to a yet undefined state of being merged into one organization. Throughout the journey, many lessons have been learned but the principles of shared decision making, collaborative governance, and human-centred leadership have stayed as the bedrock of our collaboration. This "secret sauce" has yielded many innovations that have either resulted in better patient care, scalability, or both. The result of this approach to collaborative leadership is a joint collaborative that has weathered global pandemics, changes in government direction and funding, and uncertainty about the future, and still exists today.

Learning objectives:

• to demonstrate the pros and cons of collective action / collaborative governance in a fluctuating environment, at micro, meso, and macro levels
• to show how shared decision making, world events, enabling structures, and government direction can influence collaboration
• to tell the story of the evolution of collaboration in primary care in the Calgary Zone with possible future directions

Speaker:
Lori Montgomery, CHE - Senior Medical Director, Quality and System Integration, Primary Care Alberta

4.3 Collaboration by Collaborative Design

As a Pan-Canadian Health Organization (PCHO), Healthcare Excellence Canada works with leaders across the country to shape a future where everyone in Canada has safe and high-quality healthcare. One way that HEC embraces this role is through the collaborative model, an approach where communities in jurisdictions across the country come together around shared goals. Evidence suggests that these models of learning and engagement can have an impact across all domains of the quintuple aim. As a powerful tool for quality improvement, they have also proven to have a substantial impact on provider experience and staff engagement. Leaders from two recent collaborative will present how they used this model to engage, energize, inspire and lift up leaders in ways that create meaningful impact. Through strategies and activities that focus on building community, shared purpose, engaging individuals with lived and living experience as well as direct care staff, they demonstrate how we are better together. Highlighting activities and opportunities that integrate patient, caregiver and community perspectives, the perspectives of people in the workforce, First Nations, Inuit and Metis priorities as well as cultural safety and equity, they will share their real-world experience in achieving outcomes through design. They will share how the work to improve the quality and safety of care can bring hope, support staff retention and drive health system impact and transformation in a time of substantial change and evolving complexity.

Speakers:
Samaria Nancy Cardinal - Patient Partner
Lindsay Yarrow, CHE - Senior Program Lead, Healthcare Excellence Canada

4.4 Collaboration by Design: Expanding Access to Primary Care Through Intentional Partnership

Access to timely and appropriate primary care remains a significant challenge across provincial health systems. This presentation describes how collaboration, when intentionally designed, can enhance care accessibility, improve system efficiency, support health equity and inclusion, and optimize patient experience. The development of the Minor Injury and Illness Clinic (MIIC) at Misericordia Health Centre demonstrates how engaging partners and communities in design and evaluation leads to sustainable, patient-centred care model. The MIIC model was co-designed through active collaboration with funding partners, regional health authorities, the site operator, and frontline providers. Partners aligned around a shared goal: enabling same day and next day access to care that is matched to patient needs and acuity, while reducing pressure on emergency/urgent care departments. Patient and family perspectives were embedded in the evaluation stage. Patient feedback is reviewed and analyzed through structured process to ensure service design reflects lived experience and responds to evolving community needs. Engagement strategies included staff and patient experience surveys, reinforcing shared accountability and transparency.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to learn the LEADS aligned objectives:

• Lead Self: Reflect on leadership behaviours that foster trust, collaboration, and shared accountability.
• Engage Others: Apply strategies to engage patients, internal and external stakeholders through meaningful communication in a psychologically safe organization.
• Achieve Results: Evaluate early outcome measures, success, patient experience data and performance indicators to guide design refinement and continuous improvement.
• Develop Coalitions: Describe how partnerships across health authorities, funding partners, and operational leaders can be structured to align priorities, manage risk, and support implementation of new models of care.
• Systems Transformation: Identify scalable, collaborative design elements that can be translated to other clinical settings to improve access, integration and system efficiency.

Speaker:
Cecilia Berces - Director, Health Services - Acute Care Programs and Services, Misericordia Health Centre

4.5 The Fight for Public Healthcare: System Failure or Strategic Opportunity

Healthcare is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Advances such as artificial intelligence-supported diagnostics, precision oncology, and robotic-assisted surgery are extending life expectancy and improving quality of care. Yet paradoxically, access to healthcare is declining globally. Publicly funded systems, once a cornerstone of equity, are increasingly challenged by rising costs, shifting public perception, and expanding private-sector influence. Is public healthcare an outdated and unsustainable model, or is it being eroded by political and market-driven forces? While politics has always shaped healthcare, it is now a dominant force influencing policy, funding, and public trust. Ideological shifts, coupled with growing skepticism toward established science, are redefining both the narrative and delivery of care. These pressures raise urgent questions: Can publicly funded healthcare systems adapt to this changing landscape, or will they continue to lose ground? This session argues that public healthcare is not only salvageable but essential-and that its future depends on proactive, strategic leadership. Rather than reacting to external pressures, health leaders have an opportunity to reframe the narrative, strengthen public trust, and champion innovation within publicly funded models. Through a dynamic, rapid-fire presentation, participants will explore the evolution of healthcare systems and the growing impact of political and ideological forces. This will set the stage for an interactive discussion focused on practical strategies for resilience and transformation. Attendees will be challenged to consider how they can influence policy, counter misinformation, and lead system-level change. This session invites health leaders to move beyond debate and toward action-reimagining a sustainable, equitable future for public healthcare.

Speaker:
Stacey Litvinchuk, CHE - CEO and Principal Consultant, Axiora Governance Incorporated

13:15 - 14:45

5. Roundtables - Stay tuned for more information!

6. Roundtables - Stay tuned for more information!

7. Roundtables - Stay tuned for more information!

8. Coaches’ Corner

Take your leadership to the next level. Come and speak with leaders from across Canada in a one-on-one setting. Hear personal leadership stories, ask questions and gain valuable advice. Leaders of health regions, hospitals, private sector and community organizations, from coast to coast, will be available to provide armchair coaching in relaxed surroundings. This session is ideal for emerging or mid-career leaders looking for advice and feedback from some of Canada’s most respected health leaders.

Note that pre-registration is required to attend the Coaches' Corner Sessions.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

09:00 - 10:15

9. Seeing Through Their Eyes: A Live Clinic Walk-Through Lab for Equitable Access

What does your clinic feel like to someone already navigating mistrust, language barriers, or sensory overload? What is missed when healthcare spaces are designed for efficiency, rather than experience?

This 75-minute interactive workshop introduces a practical, equity-focused clinic walk-through methodology that helps healthcare leaders assess care environments through a patient-centred lens and translate insights into meaningful system improvements. Facilitated by Calgary West Central Primary Care Network in collaboration with Chinook Primary Care Network, this session aligns with the conference focus on human-centred system design and collaborative leadership.

The session begins with an overview of the clinic walk-through initiative, including its design, community partnerships, and key insights. Drawing on real-world findings, participants will explore how clinic environments can unintentionally create barriers related to accessibility, communication, and cultural safety, particularly for patients navigating systemic inequities.

Participants will then engage in a live, simulated clinic walk-through using curated materials such as photos, floor plans, signage, and intake forms. Small groups will examine care environments and apply a SOAR framework (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) to identify what is working well, where gaps exist, and what improvements are needed. Patient and community perspectives gathered through the original walk-throughs are embedded throughout the session to ensure authentic representation of patient voice.

The session concludes with a leadership action challenge, identifying immediate improvements, system-level changes, and cultural shifts. Participants will leave with a practical, replicable methodology and peer-informed strategies to design more inclusive, accessible, and patient-centred models of care.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Apply a structured clinic walk-through methodology to identify physical, communicative, and systemic barriers from a patient perspective
• Use SOAR analysis to translate patient perspectives into actionable improvement priorities
• Identify leadership actions that support collaborative, equity-informed system design and enhance models of care

Speakers:
Becky Avery-Cooper - Community Integration Consultant, Calgary West Central Primary Care Network
Robyn Chelte - Senior Advisor - PMH Integration Lead, Calgary West Central Primary Care Network
Alicia Marchtaler - Manager of Corporate Governance, Calgary West Central Primary Care Network

10. From Reactive to Predictive: Designing Compliance Systems That Think Ahead

Healthcare organizations often approach compliance as a retrospective activity-responding to incidents after they occur. This session introduces a predictive compliance model using the ICEF (Integrated Compliance and Excellence Framework), enabling leaders to anticipate risks, prevent failures, and design systems that continuously learn and adapt. Drawing on implementation insights from long-term care and healthcare operations, this session demonstrates how integrating frontline staff input, patient and family feedback, and system-level data can transform compliance into a proactive, intelligence-driven function. Participants will explore how predictive compliance reduces administrative burden, improves staff morale by minimizing reactive work, and strengthens patient safety outcomes. Patient and family voices are embedded through co-designed safety indicators and experience-informed early warning triggers. The model also advances equity by identifying populations at higher risk of adverse outcomes, supports sustainability through reduced rework and inefficiencies, and incorporates culturally responsive approaches, including Indigenous-informed perspectives in care design. This interactive workshop will include a facilitated system-mapping exercise where participants redesign a current compliance process into a predictive model using ICEF principles. Attendees will leave with practical tools to implement within their own organizations.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply predictive compliance principles using the ICEF framework.
• Identify early warning indicators using staff, patient, and system data.
• Redesign compliance processes into proactive, adaptive systems.

Speakers:
Prachi Patel, RN, CHE, MHA - Director of Care, AgeCare
Lijo Joseph - Director of Care, AgeCare

11. Embracing Failure as a Leadership Practice: Building Psychological Safety and Learning Cultures in Healthcare

This interactive workshop explores the concept of the "Failure Club" as a practical and transformative approach to leadership in healthcare. Rooted in real-world leadership experiences and reflective practice, this session challenges traditional notions of failure as something to avoid and instead reframes it as a critical driver of learning, innovation, and system improvement. Participants will examine how leaders can intentionally create psychologically safe environments where failure is openly discussed, analyzed, and leveraged to improve patient and family outcomes. Through facilitated discussion, small-group activities, and real case examples, attendees will engage with practical tools to normalize failure conversations within teams. The session will highlight how this approach aligns with LEADS domains, particularly Lead Self (reflective practice and vulnerability), Engage Others (fostering trust and psychological safety), and Achieve Results (using failure as a catalyst for improvement and accountability). Patient and family voices will be integrated through case-based narratives that demonstrate how learning from failure directly impacts care experiences and outcomes. The workshop will also explore how this concept supports broader commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous health by creating space for diverse perspectives and knowledge systems, and by encouraging humility in leadership. Sustainability will be considered through the lens of reducing wasteful processes and continuously improving care delivery systems.

Participants will leave with practical strategies to implement "Failure Club" principles within their own teams and organizations, along with facilitation techniques to support ongoing reflective learning. The session will be highly interactive and designed to move beyond theory into actionable leadership practice.

Speaker:
Patrick Whalen, CHE - Senior Director Provincial Mental Health & Addictions, NL Health Services

12. Lightning Sessions: Leadership by Design

12.1 Strengthening Patient Directed Discharge Communication on an enterprise-wide scale: our journey in optimizing the After Visit Summary in Epic

The After Visit Summary (AVS) within the Epic electronic health record is intended to support patient understanding, safe discharge, and continuity of care. At the University Health Network (UHN), despite the AVS being positioned as a core discharge communication tool, Epic go-live in 2022 occurred without the analytics or governance structures required to assess AVS utilization or quality. This gap limited organizational insight into clinician engagement, patient access, and the effectiveness of the AVS in supporting patient experience. Guided by LEADS principles, UHN undertook a phased initiative to redesign, measure, and optimize AVS use in partnership with patient partners. The work began by critically examining system assumptions and grounding decisions in patient experience data and insights shared by patient partners. In Phase 1, teams developed a foundational utilization measure-AVS print rates-as a proxy for meaningful clinician engagement, supported by clearly defined inpatient and outpatient metrics and rigorous data validation. Recognizing the need for broader impact, Phase 2 focused on building coalitions across data and analytics, patient education and engagement, privacy, digital operations, patient partners, and clinical stakeholders. This collaboration enabled innovative approaches to data access and validation while maintaining privacy safeguards. A comprehensive AVS dashboard was introduced to support system transformation, integrating usage, quality, benchmarking, and digital access measures, including instruction section completion and patient portal viewing. Throughout the initiative, purposeful engagement of patient partners ensured that measures reflected real clinical workflows and patient priorities, directly shaping what patients will experience as a result of this work. Anchored in LEADS principles, this initiative repositioned AVS measurement from an operational afterthought to a strategic enabler of improved discharge communication, patient experience, and digital engagement. The approach and resulting dashboard offer a replicable leadership and analytics framework for strengthening transitions of care through meaningful use of patient-facing health information.

Speaker:
Louise Pothier – Manager, University Health Network

12.2 Leading by DESIGN (Developing Ecosystems for Skilled and Innovative Growth in Next generation systems) to build a culture of adaptability in Healthcare

Healthcare systems require leaders who can move beyond reacting to disruption and instead intentionally design environments that enable adaptability, equity, and sustained innovation. This interactive workshop introduces the DESIGN Lab: a person-centred leadership model that equips participants with practical tools to build cultures of adaptability across patient care, workforce development, and system performance. Grounded in a multidimensional framework linking patient experiences, clinician practices, and system environments, this session demonstrates how leaders can translate insight into action through a structured pipeline: evidence synthesis, real world implementation, and patient partnered dissemination. Case examples, including AI-enabled blood pressure monitoring, 3D-simulation-based training, and behavioural feedback in surgical systems, illustrate how adaptability can be operationalized across diverse healthcare contexts while maintaining a focus on equity, inclusion, and patient-centred care. Participants will actively engage in two facilitated design activities: (1) mapping a real organizational challenge across people, processes, and systems, and (2) redesigning their "micro-ecosystem" using human-centred and systems thinking principles. These activities foster collaboration, psychological safety, and peer learning, enabling participants to co-create solutions that are immediately transferable to their practice settings. Patient and family perspectives are embedded throughout the model, ensuring that innovation remains grounded in lived experience and responsive to diverse populations, including considerations of equity, accessibility, and inclusive design. The session aligns with CCHL priorities by integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion, and by promoting sustainable, people first system transformation. This workshop directly addresses the need to cultivate cultures of adaptability, equipping leaders with actionable strategies to design resilient systems that support both workforce well-being and patient outcomes.

Learning Objectives

• Apply a leadership by design framework to analyze adaptability challenges.
• Design a person-centred micro-ecosystem aligning people, processes, and systems.
• Translate evidence into actionable strategies for adaptability in practice.

Speaker:
Antonietta Castro - Research Assistant, Toronto Metropolitan University

12.3 From Policy to Practice: A Provincial Model of Care Toolkit to Enable Consistent, Population Needs-Based Design in British Columbia

Health systems face increasing pressure from evolving population health needs, workforce challenges, and constrained resources. Innovative Models of Care (MoC) are essential to addressing these pressures, and a standardized provincial approach presents an opportunity to align efforts, reduce duplication, and strengthen outcomes across the health system. Phase I of BC's Provincial Model of Care Framework (2023) established a shared foundation for MoC development. Phase II builds on this work through the creation of a Provincial Model of Care Toolkit to support consistent, transparent, and evidence-informed assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation of MoC's across the province. Co-developed through a provincial collaborative involving BC's regional health authorities and partners, the toolkit is organized across the frameworks seven phases: Initiate; Assess/Diagnose; Design; Prepare; Implement; Evaluate; and Sustain, each phase is supported by guiding questions, core activities, and practical tools. Aligned with the CWHLC 2026 theme, the toolkit supports intentional system design grounded in patient, family, and workforce needs. It advances key CCHL foundational topics-including people centred care, quality and safety, leadership capability, and system integration-by equipping leaders with practical tools to design locally responsive care models within a shared provincial framework. In practice, the toolkit supports leaders to review existing MoCs or design new ones; integrate population health needs, patient journeys, workforce considerations, and service data; support change management and governance decision making; and conduct structured evaluation to inform sustainment, adaptation, scaling, or disinvestment. Patient and family perspectives are embedded through tools such as person journey mapping and explicit attention to culturally safe approaches, including acknowledgement of Indigenous specific racism and the impacts of colonization.

Learning Objectives: Participants will (1) describe the structure and purpose of the Provincial Model of Care Toolkit; (2) identify how it supports consistent, population needs-based design; and (3) identify key insights to inform their own MoC initiatives.

Speakers:
Joanne Maclaren, RN, MN, CHE - Executive Director, Minimum Nurse-Patient Ratios & Models of Care, Island Health
Donna Meadows - Manager, Models of Care, Island Health

12.4 Development and Implementation of a Patient Acuity Scoring Tool in Yukon Hospitals: Data that Empowers the Front Lines and Measures the Real Picture

Inpatient units at Whitehorse General Hospital reported a perceived increase in patient acuity; however, the absence of a standardized measurement tool limited the ability to objectively capture, monitor, and respond to these changes. Despite visible strain on frontline staff, the lack of quantifiable data made it difficult to substantiate workload concerns or inform staffing decisions. The need for an acuity indicator was identified; as a small hospital, it is difficult to purchase resources for challenges like this; creating a tool ourselves was imperative.

Purpose: Acuity is a dynamic variable in any inpatient setting and a key determinant of patient assignments and staffing ratios. The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a standardized patient acuity scoring tool to capture and track this data, enabling the identification of trends and changes to better support frontline nursing staff.

Objective: This project supported nurses to take qualitative observations and reflect them as quantitative data that can be tracked, trended, and used to inform decision-making and models of care.

Practical Applications: This project highlights the following key takeaways:

• The importance of supporting front line staff to implement creative ideas and new ways of supporting decisions
• As a small organization, it is possible to create the tools you need to collect the data required to inform decisions
• The importance of using both utilization and acuity data to inform clinical models of care impact of patients and families: The data generated is entered by frontline nurses, who reflect each patient's experience. These experiences are translated into quantitative data, providing a clear and direct line of communication to executive leadership, allowing models of care to be adjusted to better match patient care needs.

Speaker:
Samantha Woodbeck - Clinical Care Manager Medical/Surgical Inpatient Care, Yukon Hospitals

12.5 Navigating Care Together: A Compassion Centered, Patient Partnered Approach to Improving Communication and Care Transitions in Acute Medicine

Hospitalized patients and their essential care partners (ECPs) often experience uncertainty, emotional distress, and confusion when navigating complex acute care environments. Challenges understanding care processes, team roles, and discharge planning can strain relationships with healthcare providers and negatively impact patient experience. As Acute Medicine Units 5 South and 5 North transition toward an Alternate Level of Care (ALC) model, there is a timely opportunity to intentionally embed compassion, empathy, and patient partnership into care navigation practices. This work is further enabled by maintaining a minimum nurse‑to‑patient ratio, which creates the relational capacity, time, and continuity required for meaningful communication and compassionate engagement. Navigating Care Together (NCT) is a compassion‑focused, patient‑ and family‑centred initiative designed to enhance communication, trust, and care transitions. The initiative offers regularly scheduled weekly sessions for hospitalized patients and their ECPs, co‑facilitated by an interprofessional team, including a unit manager, clinical nurse educator, patient care coordinator, and trained patient partner. Adequate nurse staffing supports this model by reducing task overload, allowing nurses to participate in or reinforce shared messaging, attend to patient concerns, and support follow‑up discussions outside formal sessions. The sessions provide a psychologically safe space for open dialogue, using active listening, shared storytelling, and respectful engagement to understand each patient's values, concerns, and goals. Participants receive guidance on the hospital journey, discharge planning, bedside communication tools, and relevant health system resources. Primary outcomes include improvement in real-time patient experience survey scores, with a target increase from 75% to 90% by December 1, 2026. Process measures include attendance and participant satisfaction, while balancing measures track staff‑reported time spent addressing communication challenges and communication‑related complaints. By centring compassion, patient partnership, and supportive staffing models, Navigating Care Together strengthens trust, humanizes care transitions, and offers a scalable approach to embedding compassion in acute care during system transformation.

Speaker:
Nguyen Nguyen, CHE - Clinical Operations Service Manager, Fraser Health Authority