Dear Colleagues,
As you know, UHN has been very supportive of the Excellent Care for All Bill and we have been carefully reviewing the legislation and the regulations that will inform hospitals what they need to do to comply with the legislation. We have been major proponents of the importance of measuring quality in the Ontario health environment- we want to make sure that we adhere to every element of the legislation.
I am happy to tell you that we already have most of the elements that will meet the requirements of this important quality legislation. We have an excellent Quality Committee of the Board, we have a robust process for evaluation and tracking of adverse events, we have a strong patient relations program, we survey our patient satisfaction and staff much more frequently than required by the bill. Our Balanced Score Card approach to quality improvement allows us to declare annual targets and to discuss those targets with the Board. These are all important elements that will be mandated for all hospitals in demonstrating accountability for their quality of care.
Part of the Legislation also requires that executive salaries should be frozen. A previous Straight Talk told you that mine is frozen for the foreseeable future and that this is true for our senior team as well. A portion of executive compensation has always depended on the results achieved by the organization and this continues to be the case, and the Act now requires that this be the case in all hospitals in the province. Our Board assesses executive compensation at UHN every year and a portion of executive pay is determined by how well we perform on a variety of measures which are outlined on UHN's Balanced Scorecard.
As always, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have and you can e-mail them to me directly.
Bob
