Safer Healthcare Now!, a program of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI), is making home care safety a priority and has recently assembled a group of experts to serve on our newly-formed Canadian Home Care Faculty.

In 2013, the landmark Safety at Home: A Pan-Canadian Home Care Study examined the prevalence, incidence, magnitude and types of adverse events in home care. The study found that the annual incident rate of patient safety incidents was in the range of 10 to 13 per cent and that 56 per cent of these were preventable.

In parallel, CPSI is committed to improving home care safety in Canada as part of its Patient Safety – Forward with Four business plan. A roundtable was held in June 2014 in partnership with the Canadian Home Care Association, with attendees from across Canada to begin elevating and accelerating the pace, scale and spread of safety in home care. One key enabler required to advance actions identified at the roundtable was the creation of a Canadian Home Care Safety Faculty.

This new Faculty will collaborate on generating evidence, identifying improvement opportunities and strategies to support healthcare providers and organizations within the home care sector on a national scale. We look forward to sharing the results of their work with you in the months and years to come. Inaugural Faculty members are: