Winter 2025 (Volume 35, Number 4)

Advancing Excellence and Supporting Members Through Innovation: An Update from the Quality and Innovation Committee

By Amanda Steiman, MD, MSc, FRCPC

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The Quality and Innovation Committee (QIC)—formerly known as the Quality Care Committee—has undergone a thoughtful evolution this year to better reflect its dual focus: advancing quality of care and supporting innovative approaches to optimize practice and physician well-being. The committee remains committed to its ongoing collaboration with Choosing Wisely, under the leadership of Dr. Arielle Mendel, ensuring continued alignment with evidence-based, high-value care in rheumatology. This year, in addition to continued focus on cultivation/adaptation of existing rheumatology indicators, there were also efforts made to build awareness of Choosing Wisely statements of other subspeciality groups, germane to the practice of rheumatology.

A key initiative of the QIC this year is the launch of the CRA Innovation Lab, designed to help members enhance practice efficiency, improve workflow, and ultimately strengthen patient care. The Innovation Lab embraces a collaborative model—all teach, all learn—where members share tools, strategies, and models of care that are working effectively across the country.

The 2025 National Physician Health Survey was recently published by the Canadian Medical Association, which revealed that physician burnout remains high at 46%. Key findings of the survey highlighted the important contribution of administrative burden, with the majority of physicians spending more than a full further workday (10.4 hours) per week on their electronic medical records (EMRs) outside of their clinical time. It is with this challenge in mind that we launched the Innovation Lab series.

The inaugural session, held on October 15th, 2025, titled “Burnout and Efficiency: You Are Not the Problem,” featured Drs. Diane Lacaille, Mamta Gautam, and Anand Doobay. Together, they facilitated a compelling discussion on the multifactorial contributors to burnout and explored actionable strategies for fostering resilience and system-level change. Participants also examined “pockets of positive deviance”—innovative practices within our community that improve both care delivery and professional satisfaction.

Future initiatives will address workflow optimization, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and human scribes, and leveraging EMR data to advance quality indicators and collaborative learning. The QIC looks forward to ongoing engagement with CRA members through these initiatives, as together we continue to drive innovation, enhance quality, and support the well-being of our rheumatology community.

Amanda Steiman, MD, MSc, FRCPC
Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Staff Rheumatologist, Division of Rheumatology,
Mount Sinai Hospital/University Health Network
Rebecca MacDonald Centre for Arthritis & Autoimmune Disease
Toronto, Ontario