Research

Knowledge Transfer in Health Policy, Management and Evaluation

The Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (HPME) seeks to enhance the effective transfer and utilization of research knowledge by policy makers and clinical decision-makers. To this end we have hired Anna Gagliardi as Senior Research Associate to establish a framework upon which a knowledge transfer strategy can be built. Anna is seconded to us from her position as Program Manager, Surgical Oncology, Cancer Care Ontario until March 2003. She is also a PhD student in HPME with interest in organizational communication.

We envision that the outcomes of this program will be multiple. Through greater internal awareness of individual and thematic research programs researchers can capitalize on departmental expertise and knowledge, thereby fostering greater collaboration. As a result of communicating research in the context of a unifying and cohesive framework, HPME will enhance its reputation as a leader in health services research. By developing a communication strategy using a variety of targeted mechanisms, the department will facilitate the uptake of health research that improves processes, services, products and systems which impacts on the health of Canadians.

The research transfer strategy will be rolled out in several phases. Anna's primary task involves updating the research profiles of full and associate graduate faculty members for whom HPME is their School of Graduate Studies home. Subsequent activities, outlined below, are dependent on this updated overview of departmental research initiatives:

• Identification of common research themes and the development of a framework to describe departmental activities to all stakeholders
• Use of this unifying framework in communications to key external stakeholders including the web site, annual report, externalized version of the newsletter, and other specialized reports
• "Repurposing" of already published research results to a broader audience in a variety of vehicles
• Acquisition of ideas and methods that can be incorporated into a departmental strategy through involvement in professional activities with groups such as the National Knowledge Transfer Network
• With the Communications Committee, investigating the implications of a web site redesign that would enable the incorporation of value-added resources to promote stakeholder utilization of departmental research
• Development of research projects around knowledge transfer activities with individuals, themes or on a departmental basis so that a research transfer model can be sustained.

As a researcher in HPME you have been invited by the Interim Chair, Louise Lemieux-Charles to submit your CIHR CV module/resume and other documentation from which Anna can construct a standardized research profile including professional interests, current research projects, and recent publications. You will have the opportunity to review and edit the profile prior to publication on the web site. Please send relevant documentation to:

Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, 2nd Floor
12 Queen's Park Crescent West
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8

Attn: Anna Gagliardi, Senior Research Associate

anna.gagliardi@utoronto.ca
fax: (416) 978-7350

+ + PROFILE OF THE MONTH + +

Michael A. Murray, PhD

Throughout my career I have been interested in people's evaluations of their situation, and the use of this information for research, management, and accountability purposes. The majority of my work has been with patients' evaluations of quality of care, more commonly known as patient satisfaction. I have also worked on identifying and using hospital staff members' and physicians' evaluations of their work and quality culture, hospital members' evaluations of their work in teams, nurses' evaluations of their workload, and the public's interest in healthcare performance indicators.

Education and Work Background

My BA (Honours) and MA are in Psychology from the University of Manitoba. I did my PhD in psychology at York University and then worked at York's Institute for Social Research for several years. In 1986 I moved to the University of Toronto as a Research Associate in the Health Care Research Unit where I worked with health services practitioners and researchers. After the HCRU, I joined a research team that established the Hospital Management Research Unit. After 8 years of work there I moved into a tenure-track position in HPME in 1998.

Research Activities

I was part of a research team that responded to the need expressed by the Ontario Hospital Association for intellectual leadership and research in developing a hospital report card for Ontario. My primary responsibility was the patient satisfaction aspects of various reports in Hospital Report '98 and '99.

I co-led the effort that developed the LTC Resident Survey, which is among the first instruments aimed at obtaining evaluations of quality of care from long term care residents. The instrument has been used in more than 45 organizations in Ontario and 11 in British Columbia. It was used throughout Ontario for Hospital Report '01.

Dr. Jan Barnsley and I are leading a project that is attempting to determine what specific healthcare performance indicators the Canadian public might like to see. Our previous studies had given us many candidates for performance indicators that might be valued by the public and hospital staff.

Teaching Responsibilities

I am responsible for a required PhD course, HAD 5772: Intermediate Statistics for Health Services Research, and a MHSc Block 5 elective course, HAD7001: Customer Feedback in Health Services Organizations.

Future Research

In an attempt to understand possible clinical determinants of patient satisfaction, Adalsteinn Brown and I have submitted a proposal to CIHR that would use 2000 patient-level satisfaction data merged with data from CIHI's Discharge Abstract Database. We are interested in how patients' clinical experience is related to satisfaction, and whether risk adjusting satisfaction scores on the basis of clinical experience affects hospitals' performance rankings.

Over the next few years a major focus of my attention will be on using the large databases that have been and will continue to be created to answer a number of theoretical and practical questions about patient satisfaction and its relationship to patient, staff, and organization variables. My second major focus will be on research efforts concerned with the dissemination and use of patient satisfaction survey results for improvement. These efforts should have practical benefits for healthcare providers everywhere and, more generally, inform knowledge transfer theory and improvement knowledge.

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