Patient, Family, and Citizen Partners as Key Stakeholders of Healthcare Transformation: The Quebec Experience.

As the world faces complex and unprecedented global challenges, countries are faced with the laborious challenge of remodeling their healthcare systems to offer more effective, more sustainable, and more personalized treatment to people. In order for healthcare systems to successfully address and embrace these complexities, patients, family members, and citizens (PFC) with lived experience must be recognized and integrated as a key stakeholder for health systems transformation. Indeed, PFCs with lived experience of illness and health systems navigation possess a unique and complementary expertise to that of healthcare professionals that is crucial to improving all areas of a health ecosystem. The goal of this presentation is to share some of the work the Centre of Excellence on Partnership with Patients and the Public (CEPPP) has conducted in collaboration with diverse actors in Québec's health ecosystem to mobilize the experiential-based knowledge and skills of patients and integrate these perspectives across many areas of health (in care, medical education, health research, and governance), and highlight some of the key turning points that fueled the growth of the patient partnership movement across Québec. In Québec, the concept of patient partnership was first introduced in the area of health (medical) education, where the concept of patients as partners in their own care was embedded into teaching interprofessional collaboration. In health research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) supported the implementation of a provincial SPOR SUPPORT Unit with a service platform to support researchers and research organizations to engage patients as partners in research. In the organization of care, the creation of Patient Partnership Offices in each of the 22 regional health centers has driven significant change for involving patients across the healthcare system. The CEPPP has been a leading organization in these efforts and is now developing the concept of partnership in care directly with the public, to help Québec society recognize that empowering everyone as partners in their (and our) own care is the future of health. The patient partnership movement in Quebec is a model for meaningful, systematic integration of lived-experienced towards transforming our health systems. By defining why and how patients are partners in their care and the competencies and knowledge they have and develop, the CEPPP is bridging the gap between experience and care. The patient partner movement is growing exponentially in Quebec and across the world. The Quebec experience demonstrates the importance of taking a transversal and integrated approach to PFC partnership. Looking ahead, issues of patient roles, as well as systematic and strategic inclusion of these perspectives will have to be prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]