President and CEO message

President Dr. Jean-Hugues Brossard and CEO Dr. Lisa Calder set the course for the CMPA’s next 3 years, as we support our members and employees, strengthen our foundation, and adapt to a changing healthcare environment.

Acknowledging the land

The CMPA offices, located in Ottawa, are on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.

We honour and pay our respect to these lands, and to all First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples throughout Turtle Island.

Mission, vision & values

Mission

To protect the professional integrity of physicians and promote safe medical care in Canada.

Vision

The CMPA is valued as an essential component of the Canadian healthcare system.

Our core values

The CMPA is committed to upholding our values in all we do – for physicians and Canadian healthcare.

  • Mutuality
  • Discretionary assistance
  • Ethical defence
  • Safe medical care
  • Service excellence
  • Responsible stewardship

Learn more about our core values.

top

Strategic priorities

The COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare human resource crisis, the toxic drug crisis, and many more complex issues have created unprecedented challenges for the Canadian healthcare system. Increasingly, our physician members are facing new responsibilities and changes to their scopes of practice, potentially increasing their medico-legal risk. These changes have also placed new demands on our employees, who have been working to support members in a shifting healthcare landscape.

At CMPA, we are here for our members, our employees, and the healthcare system. Our 2023-2025 Strategy responds to many rapidly evolving needs by focusing on three priorities:

our members and employees

Support

our foundation through collaboration

Strengthen

to the changing healthcare environment through modernization

Adapt

How we’ll get there

In addition to our on-going work in providing medico-legal support, protecting the professional integrity of physicians, enhancing patient safety, and compensating patients on behalf of our members when its proven the patient has been injured as a result of negligent medical care (fault in Québec), we will focus on five Strategic Enablers: Member Experience, Talent, Learning, Data, and EDI. The Strategy will also allow us to modernize our governance practices.

  • Modernizing the member experience

    Members are looking for advice and support in more tech-friendly and flexible ways. Modernizing the member experience will let us continue providing our trusted phone-based, peer-to-peer guidance while enhancing our online membership and learning services – so that members can access the information they need in ways they choose.

    What success will look like

    • Member services are accessible, meaningful, and simple to use – whether it’s one-on-one peer support and/or online, self-directed services
    • Data are being used to improve member services and enhance business operations

    “Modernizing the member experience is essential for streamlining our services during a time of unprecedented challenges to physicians in practice. As an organization that aims to be a partner in practice for our members, we are leveraging our data to improve both how we provide our medico-legal services and how we create and distribute impactful risk education products.”

    Allan McDougall
    Education & Knowledge Translation Specialist

  • Developing our talent

    Our employees are at the heart of our success. In order to continue to be there for our members, we need to be there for our employees. We must nurture employee engagement and attract new talent by offering a workplace culture centred on career growth, learning, and meaningful work.

    What success will look like

    • We intensify efforts to attract, engage, and retain a talented and diverse workforce
    • We have an internal “talent pipeline” in place to ensure that employees have opportunities to build their skills, advance their careers, and respond to changing member needs

    “Investing in our employees' growth and well-being is not only the right thing to do, it is essential to ensuring our long-term success.”

    William Shi
    Actuary

  • Enhancing our learning resources

    We want to help physicians deliver safe medical care and reduce their medico-legal risk by providing them with more opportunities for relevant and tailored learning. Additionally, to effectively support members and remain an employer of choice, we need to provide our own employees with continuous learning and development opportunities to enhance and develop their skills.

    What success will look like

    • Our physician members have better access to user-friendly, high-quality, and inclusive learning experiences in a variety of digital, face-to-face, and hybrid formats that help support positive change
    • Our learning resources are continuing to engage employees, and providing opportunities for skill development and professional growth

    “Delivering our learning resources affords us the opportunity to connect with our members and understand the realities they are facing within the evolving healthcare system. These insights help us to be agile and responsive with our educational programming so that we can heighten our relevance and deliver learning that members can use in their daily practice.”

    Dr. Liisa Honey
    Senior Physician Advisor

  • Leveraging our data

    CMPA has the largest physician medico-legal database in the world. We will leverage the data we have and collect the data we need in order to better support our physician members in a shifting healthcare landscape.

    What success will look like

    • We are using more data and advanced analysis (e.g. artificial intelligence) to deliver better service to our members
    • Physicians are being provided with aggregated data derived insights that increase awareness of medico-legal risks, enhance safe medical care, and improve our understanding of how members experience bias or discrimination

    “Data is one of the basic building blocks of good decision making. At CMPA, we are looking to further leverage the data we collect in secure and innovative ways to inform improvements to our products and services.”

    Mandy Tang
    Senior User Experience Strategist

  • Advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)

    We regularly hear from physicians who are experiencing medico-legal problems related to racism, discrimination, and other inequities. Our case data support these claims. Failing to focus on EDI negatively and significantly affects physicians, threatens patient safety, and creates medico-legal risk. CMPA has a responsibility to address these issues, help mitigate bias and inequity in the services we provide, and make physicians feel valued for their diverse experiences and perspectives.

    What success will look like

    • Members describe culturally safe experiences when they call us and when they are interacting with legal counsel
    • Cultural sensitivity and inclusion are embedded in CMPA’s organizational culture and governance practices
    • We have a clear position on alternative dispute resolution and are working with stakeholders to improve alternative dispute resolution processes

    “Cultivating a sense of belonging is key to reaching our full potential and our abilities. CMPA’s commitment to EDI will allow us to grow our member services and be an organization where people want to work. I’m excited to see us support and value members and employees for their diverse expertise, backgrounds, and experiences.”

    Renata Huyghebaert
    Strategic Communications Advisor

Modernizing our governance practices

As an organization, we are always looking for ways to enhance and improve the way we support physicians – and this includes taking steps to modernize our governance.

To be there for members, we must ensure our governance model aligns with contemporary practices and that the size, composition, representation, scope, and structure of our Council meets the needs of both the Association and its members.

"Governance Review is so much more than asking questions to make improvements. It’s about putting in major effort to engage minds and souls, stretch intellect, and determine what model works best for our organization, keeping us member-focused."
—Dr. Clover Hemans, CMPA Councillor

Going forward

We know we can’t do this alone. As we launch the Strategy, we will actively seek to collaborate with healthcare organizations across Canada. We will also continue to be agile, and adapt the Strategy as needed. We are committed to being fiscally responsible, and we look forward to reporting on our progress.

top