Thank you. My name is Marie-Claude Prémont.
I will speak to you in French; we are in Ottawa, after all.
I am joined by my colleague, Nassera Touati, who specializes in health care system management. I am a legal expert. I teach health and social service law, among other things. Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective with you.
Our comments today will focus on one aspect of health care management, interprofessional collaboration. With that in mind, we will touch on four areas. First, we will explain what interprofessional collaboration means. Second, we will discuss the measures that Quebec has put in place to foster interprofessional collaboration. Third, we will explore the empirical evidence regarding the measures and their effectiveness. Finally, we will speak to the federal government's role in interprofessional collaboration and make a few recommendations.
So interprofessional collaboration, what is it? As the name suggests, it is the delivery of patient care in cooperation with stakeholders in different fields of practice to ensure the continuous treatment of essentially complex health problems.
The increasing complexity of health needs, particularly as regards chronic illness, is forcing us to rethink how we deliver health care. That is where interprofessional collaboration comes in. It offers a key approach in dealing with these problems.
Clearly, that information does not come from Nassera Touati or Marie-Claude Prémont. Those findings have been presented multiple times by a number of inquiry commissions, expert reports and so forth. The management of chronic illnesses, in particular, poses huge challenges, and interprofessional collaboration can help us address them.
Ms. Touati will speak to the second point, regarding the measures implemented in Quebec.