TOP of Mind - THE CHANGE FOUNDATION's E-Newsletter February 2010 The Change Foundation & The Commonwealth Fund put their minds to improving primary care on both sides of the border during 1st Canada-US policy exchange As Top of Mind readers might recall, last year the Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund (CWF) decided to put their minds and money together to co-sponsor a US-Canada health policy exchange, focusing first on primary care reform. The inaugural international meeting on health-care quality, "Innovations in Primary Care" takes place next month in New York and will convene about 20 American and Canadian policy leaders. They will dive deep into what makes or breaks good primary care on both sides of the border and surface with common and discrete solutions to improve primary care - and the performance of our respective health systems. "The picture is clear and it isn't pretty: the US and Canada remain far behind other countries in providing quality primary care on many counts," says Change Foundation CEO Cathy Fooks. "That's why we need exchanges like this -- to identify what changes are possible and preferable, and where improvements could become permanent." The forum will focus on goals, best practices, quality measurement, culture change, and workforce and aging population issues. The group will also probe the CWF’s rich and respected cross-national comparisons on primary care and results from international surveys of chronically ill patients and primary care doctors. In addition to an impressive lineup of American speakers, including CWF president Karen Davis, US Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Sherry Glied, and leaders in the field, there is a strong contingent of Canadian primary care experts, including Brian Hutchinson, William Hogg, Heather Manson, Bonnie Brossart, and Ruth Wilson. Read the agenda and check our website in the spring for case studies on exemplar health systems and other papers commissioned for the exchange.