An new permanent Interestablishment Trajectory Management Committee
Offering a space to discuss sustainable responses to patient trajectory issues
The Interestablishment Trajectory Management Committee (ITMC) was created in December 2023, as a result of work carried out over several years as part of the Patient Trajectory project. As a reminder, the latter aimed to define a clear and transparent transfer process for patients attending at least two of the Initiative’s four partner institutions. The ultimate aim of the Patient Trajectory project was to guide patients and their families towards appropriate care and services, and to facilitate access to them.
Over the past few years, three phases of the project have been carried out: the first to take stock of the current situation, the second to identify solutions for smoothing the patient trajectory, and the third to implement these solutions.
Based on a multi-stakeholder, multi-center collaboration involving patients and professionals, as well as a research team and service designers from the Meilleur Monde cooperative (website in French), this approach led to the identification of six solutions to the trajectory issues observed. These solutions, described as “concrete” and “easily applicable” in the various centers, have been prioritized and validated by the establishment managers and are currently being implemented, starting with the introduction of the ITMC Council.
Who sits on this committee?
The ITMC is made up of professionals and managers from each of the Initiative’s partner establishments, as well as Patient Resources and the Inter-establishment Navigators (IENs). The establishments themselves will be responsible for coordinating the new committee, which will meet four times a year. CHU Sainte-Justine is the first establishment to be designated to lead the annual meetings.
Its varied composition – 19 members from different establishments and services, including families – enables the ITMC to respect the main principles of neutrality, listening, respect and benevolence, to ensure that it functions smoothly in the service of a common interest. The committee also benefits from the representation of those who are most affected by the problems that can arise in complex care trajectories: families!
What is the role and mandate of the ITMC?
In general terms, the ITMC helps to identify the operational and strategic issues facing families and professionals in the field, and to devise and implement appropriate solutions to meet the needs identified. To achieve this, the ITMC aims to:
- Question, analyze and prioritize the issues on which to intervene;
- Identify solutions to operational issues and recommend solutions to strategic issues, which the ITMC Board can then address to the relevant people and entities within each center;
- Mandate IENs or other relevant work teams to outline and implement solutions, then monitor their implementation and adjust them as necessary.
Four meetings have already taken place, between December 2023 and September 2024. Among other things, these exchanges have made it possible to:
- Ratify the role and mandate of the ITMC;
- Set up operating procedures;
- Design a common dashboard for the IENs and the ITMC to monitor activities, results and impacts;
- Raise and prioritize certain trajectory issues
- Monitor solutions to be implemented by 2025, and allocate responsibility for various projects;
- Form a sub-working group (steering) to consider the more complex surgical trajectory of certain patients.
And what about the future?
In addition to the ongoing monitoring of trajectory issues that will be reported to the ITMC, the five other solutions identified as part of the Patient Trajectory project and validated by facility managers will be worked on within this committee – namely :
- Ensure (first) appointment(s) in interdisciplinary mode;
- Establish a protocol for exchanging information 4 directions;
- Make a systematic post-operative follow-up call:
- Make a systematic pre-operative courtesy call;
- Perpetuate the role of IENs.
MUSCO’s cross-functional coordination team has played an advisory role to the ITMC since its inception, and will continue to do so until the Initiative ends in the summer of 2025, providing its expertise in cross-functional collaboration and governance.
It’s a long-term project that has now come to fruition with the setting up of the ITMC. This new committee will make it possible to establish lasting, joint solutions to facilitate the trajectory of patients requiring complex care, and is a tangible result of the collaborative efforts made to date. Thank you to all the members involved in making this exchange possible!