Our Strategic Priorities

Innovate and shape care to client and family needs

Goal: Clients and families will experience safe care and services that are easy to navigate, hopeful, shaped and evaluated around their needs and goals. Our Royal Service Promise will ensure that from the first point of contact, clients and families receive innovative, culturally competent quality care that meets them where they are, by highly knowledgeable, compassionate, interdisciplinary teams and peers at The Royal and by other providers in the system. 

Objectives:

1. Redesign, transform and evaluate programs and services to meet the diverse needs of clients and families as they evolve
   • create integrated pathways (inside and with partners)
   • address full bio-psycho-social-spiritual-needs of clients and families through integration and collaboration 
   • evolve the organizational structure, design and supports at The Royal, in partnership with people with lived expertise and our teams, to enable more integrated, interdisciplinary, team-based care that meets clients’ needs and fully draws on diverse expertise.
   • create evaluation and improvement models for all programs driven by client-oriented outcomes
   • work with existing funding models to develop creative approaches to interdisciplinary and novel care.
2. Develop and empower our people as change leaders, collaborators, advocates and strong teams within a mutually supportive, respectful environment

3. Continue to focus on client safety in all aspects of care and provide a positive environment for clients and their families

Where we will be in five years:

• Everyone at The Royal will have experiences that reflect our Royal Service Promise
• We will be developing, delivering and evaluating innovative, evidence-informed care that improves client-oriented outcomes 
• The Royal will achieve top quartile performance in accreditation results and meet or exceed quality targets 

 

Advance specialized care

Goal: Grow our regional leadership in specialized care, including integrating client and family expertise, research, education and system partnerships to continually improve care.

Objectives:

1. Invent, test, evolve, deliver and evaluate improved treatments and outcomes and that support recovery, safety and quality of life, through partnerships among scientists, clinicians, people with lived experience, families and other providers
2. Accelerate knowledge mobilization, transfer and uptake within The Royal and across the system

Where we will be in 5 years:

• Knowledge developed at The Royal will influence care and treatment for people with specialized and complex needs in our region, across the country and around the world.
• Clients with specialized and complex needs in the region will have access to the most leading edge care and treatment, from our providers and through our capacity and knowledge mobilization across the region

 

Connect care for a more accessible system

Goal: Co-create an accessible and fully integrated system of care, working shoulder to shoulder with clients, families and system partners. Catalyze system change by advancing our leadership as a “hospital without walls” and leader in digital health innovation.

Objectives:

1. Develop and implement regional coordinated access for seamless connection across the system, working toward a fluid digital platform that:
   • matches clients to care
   • supports clinical decisions
   • draws together all of the regional providers, enabling integrated operations and information sharing between providers and programs
   • meets client-oriented outcomes
2. Revolutionize how, when and where care is delivered (virtually and in-person), and clarify our roles across the full spectrum of care  
3. Evolve a system of phased treatment so clients have access to some form of accountable, meaningful care from the first point of contact, eliminating static wait times
4. Expand support/service to underserved populations, evolving community-specific approaches in partnership with each community

Where we will be in 5 years:

• Coordinated access will be successfully implemented, with clients connected to the right care and all providers working in tandem for a seamless, client-oriented system
• Every client will have a tangible, supported experience from the first point of contact, including available education and self-management tools throughout their phased treatment 
• Evolve the concept of wait times so that all clients have access to some coordinated, phased care from first point of contact

 

Integrate research, education, practice, and lived expertise to improve client and family-oriented outcomes and experiences

Goal:  As an innovative academic health science centre, foster a dynamic culture where research and care are connected in all aspects of our work. We will bring together research and practice and forge new possibilities for research that transform client care and outcomes in the areas that matter most to clients and families. We will educate and recruit top talent from around the world to generate a convergence of diverse and cross-disciplinary expertise.

Objectives:

1. Create an integrated education strategy that strengthens education and training across disciplines and professions, attracting learners and trainees as a key part of our workforce and advancing integrated approaches to mental health and addiction.
2. Strengthen our environment to enable academic leaders across disciplines and at all career stages to thrive and further contribute to our shared vision.
3. Build interdisciplinary teams that include clients, families, clinicians, researchers and program leaders to explore questions on the full continuum of research and care, from discovery to evaluation.
4. Build our capacity as an incubator of ideas, and catalyze ideas into actions – for the community, the region, and the world.

Where we will be in five years:

• Everyone at The Royal will have the potential to be part of and benefit from world leading scientific exploration
• The Royal will be a global leader in MHA in integrated client/family oriented research, outcomes, care design, evaluation and adoption

 

Advocate and partner for systemic equity

Goal: Build understanding that people living with mental health conditions and addictions inherently experience systemic inequities, discrimination, and that many of our clients experience factors that further marginalize them.  We will elevate the voices of individuals and groups who experience systemic inequities to push a progressive agenda around mental health/addiction services and systemic inequities, continually evolving our own capacity for equity, diversity and inclusion, and using science to influence culture, challenge oppressive structures and foster policy change. 

Objectives:

1. Develop capacity within The Royal and with system partners and other stakeholders to amplify the voices of people with lived expertise and to identify and influence the big topics that could be shifted through evidence, science and sharing experiences. 
2. Develop a clear, shared commitment to creating systemic equity for people with mental health conditions and addictions and for all marginalized, racialized and other vulnerable, diverse individuals. 
3. Build capacity for “advocacy through science”, through education, outreach and taking public stances on systemic issues related to mental health, in collaboration with system partners and people with lived expertise 
4. Build cultural competence and humility at The Royal to ensure our programs, services and spaces are welcoming to all, and appropriately address needs

Where we will be in five years:

• Indigenous people with mental health and addictions needs receive meaningful, high quality, culturally competent care in the setting that works best for them
• The Royal will play a key role in making policy and social change related to systemic equity through evidence, science and sharing experiences