BC Ministry of Health launched a Primary Care Networks (PCN) Refresh in Fall 2023. The refresh required Divisions of Family Practice, Health Authorities, clinicians, Indigenous Nations, and community groups to work together to plan, make decisions, and govern primary care development.
Recognizing the complexity of this task, we are developing a new series of workshops to support effective, distributed, and transparent governance. Governance that better defines roles and accountabilities, and supports evolution and adaptation to changing community needs.
Governance is the process of setting objectives and making and evolving decisions that guide people toward achieving shared objectives.
Operations is doing the work and organizing day-to-day activities within the constraints defined through governance.
(from Sociocracy 3.0)
This is a new and developing area of work for the ISU
Across the board we see challenges in governance and shared decision-making and we are currently designing and piloting a workshop series to help.
Why focus on governance?
What we’re hearing from regions is that shared governance is tricky to implement (it really is!). We all work in organizations with their own structures, processes, constraints, and cultures which contribute to the challenges of making decisions and getting things done. AND, there are things you can do to help make shared governance easier!
Groups that have worked on their governance have shared that the process helped to reduce redundancy, improve collaboration and communication, better manage risk, foster transparency, and enhance accountability.
How can we help?
Through a series of workshops we can help your group: map out who is responsible for what, where there might be gaps in communication and ways to mitigate them, suggest tools to support collaborative working, define clear decision-making processes, and find opportunities to enhance working relationships.
If this sounds like something that would be useful to your group, send us an email at isu@familymed.ubc.ca.