Leadership Competencies for Designing and Implementing Integrated Health and Social Care Systems

Abstract

Background: Traditional education for healthcare leaders supports individuals to learn how to lead organizations, with functional areas such as strategy, organizational behaviour, finance and accounting, and information technology. As healthcare systems globally shift toward more healthcare integration, we need to rethink how we recruit and equip leaders with the skills and experiences needed to lead complex adaptive systems, that go well beyond a focus on individual organizations. A synthesis of the literature evidence identifies which skills and behaviours facilitate effective leadership of integrated care initiatives as well as provides a framework for highlighting the core competencies needed for a new generation of leaders. Aims and objectives: During this workshop, authors of a Canadian article on leadership competencies for integrated care will review their competency framework and will invite panellists who are leading different integrated care systems to share their perspectives on the skills, behaviours and competencies needed to lead and support integrated systems of care in this environment. We will present and discuss real-life leadership scenarios and experiences both to validate the competency framework and to engage the audience in a discussion on what it takes to lead in an integrated care system. Workshop participants and panellists will explore questions such as: what are the leadership challenges we face in shifting towards more integrated care delivery? What are the skills and competencies we want to emerge in the next generation of healthcare leaders? What are the implications for leadership and management recruitment and ongoing education? What kinds of education programs for integrated care and complex adaptive systems exist currently and what can we learn from them about how to reshape traditional health leadership curricula? Format: The workshop is formatted as follows: Chairperson: 1. Introduction 2. Overview of proposed leadership competency framework Panellists: 3. Stories from leaders across different countries about challenges and success factors in leading integrated systems of care 4. Developing leadership: example programmes and reflections from those who have led them 5. Discussion? All participants 6. Discussion by panellists and audience on considerations for how we recruit, educate and mentor leaders in a complex integrated-care world. Target Audience: The target participants are individuals working in policy, practice, education and system leadership who are focused on the challenges of advancing integrated care. Learnings: This workshop is intended to encourage participants to think differently about necessity of evolving leadership development for integrated care by presenting a competency framework and showcasing how these competencies work in practice with leaders across different countries.

Keywords

• adaptive leadership
• competencies
• integrated care systems
• education