About the Excellent Care for All Act

The Excellent Care for All Act (ECFAA), which came into law in June of 2010, puts Ontario patients first by strengthening the health care sector's organizational focus and accountability to deliver high quality patient care. ECFAA is based on strategic directions that exemplify good governance and high quality patient care. It helps define quality for the health care sector, reinforces shared responsibility for quality of care, builds and supports boards’ capability to oversee the delivery of high quality of care, and ensures health care organizations make information on their commitment to quality publicly available.

Requirements for Health Care Providers

The legislation sets out a number of requirements for health care providers (currently only applicable to hospitals in Ontario within the meaning of the Public Hospitals Act). The legislation requires that hospitals :

• establish quality committees that report on quality-related issues
• put annual quality improvement plans in place and make these available to the public
• link executive compensation to the achievement of targets set out in the quality improvement plan
• put patient / care provider satisfaction surveys in place
• conduct staff surveys
• develop a declaration of values following public consultation, if such a document is not currently in place
• establish a patient relations process to address and improve the patient experience.

Supporting Success

Guidance has been developed to assist hospitals and other health care providers with implementing the various aspects of ECFAA into their organizations to ensure a strong quality improvement program.

• Quality Committees
• Patient Surveys
• Employee and Service Provider Surveys
• Patient Relations Process
• Patient Declaration of Values
• Annual Quality Improvement Plans
• Performance Based Compensation
• Critical Incident Reporting

Board Training

To help organizations adopt the principles of ECFAA, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care supported the delivery of the Effective Governance for Quality and Patient Safety program to provide a common, evidence-based platform of governance training to support the quality agenda.

In 2011, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) partnered with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) to create and deliver education sessions for the province's hospital leaders.

In 2013, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) partnered with the Association of Family Health Teams (AFHTO), the Association of Ontario Health Centres (AOHC) and the Nurse Practitioner's Association of Ontario (NPAO) to deliver this program to Ontario's Interprofessional primary care organizations to promote improved capacity for quality within the leadership of these organizations.

For more information on CPSI's toolkit for healthcare board members, senior executives, and physician leaders to support organizational efforts in improving quality and patient safety, please visit CPSI's website or access the toolkit.

Resources :

• ECFAA Regulations
• Excellent Care for All Act, 2010
• Public Hospitals Act
• Bill 46 (An Act respecting the care provided by health care organizations)