Commitment to Quality

Quality is an integral part of Southwestern Public Health’s (SWPH's) programs and services. Our commitment to providing the very best public health programs and services to our clients and partners guides everything that we do. You can hold us accountable for providing public health programs and services that:

• Reflect local population issues, the best available evidence, new public health knowledge and the local context;
  
  
• Reflect effective partnerships with government, community agencies, clients, academic partners, and other appropriate organizations;
  
  
• Use a variety of communication modalities to ensure effective communications; and
  
  
• Make use of outcome data to inform continuous improvement (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Long-Term Care, Foundational Standards)

How does SWPH demonstrate a commitment to quality?

At Southwestern Public Health, staff engagement, shared leadership, and investment from everyone are vital for achieving quality public health programs and services. To this end, we are committed to providing the required leadership, support and resources to make this happen.

Quality is about delivering on our promise to our clients and partners in everything we do. Everyone who works for Southwestern Public Health has a part to play in ensuring this happens. 

We do this by:

1. Building an organizational culture that understands what is meant by quality, how quality improvement is achieved, why quality improvement is necessary, and how quality improvement relates to the organization as a whole and its leadership philosophy;
   
   
2. Implementing a Quality Policy that provides direction for the continuous quality improvement process at SWPH;
   
   
3. Establishing a Quality Committee that includes staff representation from diverse programs/services to ensure their input into and engagement in planning for quality improvement;
   
   
4. Developing specific program plans for quality initiatives at the organizational level that the Quality Committee is responsible for supporting;  
   
   
5. Using program planning as an opportunity to incorporate quality improvement into program and service delivery;
   
   
6. Encouraging shared responsibility for quality improvement amongst all staff, students, and third-party contractors through standards, education, training and coaching, supervision and effective communication;
   
   
7. Providing staff with access to data, evidence, tools, structures and processes for measuring and improving the quality of their programs and services;
   
   
8. Measuring client, community, community partner and stakeholder experience to inform quality improvement;
   
   
9. Continuously challenging the organization to improve the quality of programs and services to prevent quality incidents and identify quality opportunities;
   
   
10. Routinely reviewing outcome data that include variances from performance expectations and implementing remediation plans;
    
    
11. Developing and sharing an overarching Quality Statement that informs clients/partners of what to expect from SWPH; and
    
    
12. Communicating SWPH’s CQI initiatives to its stakeholders annually.