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Physician Practice Improvement (Updated 2022)

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Canadians deserve and expect the best possible care from their physicians, and all licensed physicians in Canada must be able to demonstrate that they are sustaining and enhancing their competence throughout their careers.

Historically, this was known as “physician revalidation.” In every aspect of health care, however, emphasis is shifting to quality improvement. This paper lays out a plan for a new approach to assessing and enhancing competence – it is called Physician Practice Improvement (PPI).

This new approach begins, as revalidation did, with the understanding that each physician has unique learning needs which are largely determined by the nature of his or her individual practice. But it also recognizes that, until now, there has been no effort to ensure the continuing education physicians undertake is based on the needs they have identified (that flow from their patients and their communities, the competencies they are trying to sustain and the outcomes they are attempting to achieve). Under PPI, that will change. Individual physicians will use the principles of continuous quality improvement to assess their own practices.