Rural health dialogue findings shared at Saskatchewan conference

November 30, 2010 – The McMaster Health Forum’s role in Saskatchewan’s efforts to improve rural health care delivery was highlighted by Director John Lavis at the recent Connecting the Dots III conference held in Regina.

The conference engaged healthcare system leaders as well as representatives of urban and rural municipalities in identifying key actions and next steps in the process of developing a plan for improving access to rural and remote health services in the province.

About 70 people attended the conference, of which a section was devoted to the debriefing session about the Forum’s stakeholder dialogue on developing a rural health strategy in Saskatchewan. After being introduced by the province’s deputy minister of health, Lavis explained the background and planning leading up to the dialogue held on June 17, including the preparation of the evidence brief that pulled together the best available evidence on the challenge, and the steps involved in determining participants in the dialogue.

He summarized the findings of the evidence brief, which was developed as the catalyst for discussions on the underlying problem of the absence of an integrated approach in the province to address the healthcare challenges faced by those living in rural areas.

The major findings from the stakeholder dialogue were also shared with conference participants, as well as suggestions for discussion points to help in the planning for future action.

The presentation also looked at the evaluation process of both the evidence brief and stakeholder dialogue. The Forum’s methods for bringing together keys stakeholders and informing them of the issues received high marks in the evaluations.

A debriefing session is held after each deliberative dialogue organized by the Forum, in order to provide representatives of key stakeholders with an opportunity to discuss the implications and action considerations that came out of the dialogue.

For more details on the Saskatchewan dialogue, view the evidence brief, dialogue summary and topic overview.