Dear Colleagues,

Over the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to visit the staff at each of the Toronto Rehab sites, accompanied by Susan Jewell, VP and site lead, so that I can meet our new colleagues, hear from themdirectly and explore ideas about our new organization. During this time, Toronto Rehab's clinical leaders have also been making presentations on their programs to the senior management team so that all of our leaders have a greater understanding of the breadth and scope of the expertise that exists in each of these programs.

In all of these meetings there has been excitement about what we can accomplish together. There are tremendous opportunities to explore new models of care, enhance patient experiences and outcomes and build capacity to provide not just more care, but the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

We still have a lot to learn about each other. The reality is, announcing and approving the integration was the easy part. Now the real work begins as we look at leveraging the synergies and talents across the whole of UHN in a way that enhances our ability to serve staff and patients better.

At Toronto Rehab the clinical programs continue to care for patients as they normally do with some changes in reporting relationships. For those working in corporate services, they're now part of integrated department structures in finance, human resources, education and organizational development, communications, infrastructure and planning and other back-office functions that play a big role in supporting the organization's activities.

Over the coming weeks and months, you will hear more about integration within these teams that will enhance the services they currently provide to our staff and patients. You'll hear about efforts to harmonize payroll and benefit systems, align financial management systems, invest in and integrate information technology infrastructure and other priorities identified by our Corporate Services Integration Committee.

This group, headed up by Emma Pavlov, is made up of members of corporate services departments from both organizations and met for the first time last week. As this group works, communication about its activities will be a priority and we will also be talking about how we will reinvest the savings we achieve in care at Toronto Rehab.

We will also begin the process of reviewing what it means to be UHN, now that Toronto Rehab is part of the family. This is a new organization and we will need to change the way we speak about ourselves to our patients, our community, our donors and to each other.

Does it mean we change our name and logo? Does it mean we change what we call our programs and sites? Does it mean we leave things as they are? We will explore these and other questions over the coming months and, as we do this work, I will be inviting your input.

By coming together, we're taking Toronto Rehab's expertise in post-acute care and rehabilitation science, the best of UHN's expertise in acute care medicine and research, and our combined leadership in interprofessional education, to create a new organization that will transform how we think about and deliver health care today, and tomorrow.

I'd like to thank everyone for letting me know what you think and encourage you to keep putting your ideas forward. Our patients will benefit from every idea.

Bob

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