Hi Everyone:
By now, you've heard about our Purpose Statement - "We are a caring, creative and accountable academic hospital, transforming health care for our patients, our community and the world" - and may have even committed it to memory!
We recently held a focus group to hear feedback from staff representing the sites, and various clinical as well as non-clinical roles. Overall, staff felt very positive about our Purpose Statement and thought it reflected their roles in the organization, UHN's values and the government's focus on greater health integration. Many people have asked whether we are "dropping" our vision of "achieving global impact". I personally feel (and I know that most of you agree) that achieving global impact is an important visionary statement for UHN. It reflects our long-term goals, like a lighthouse reflects a long-term target for a sailor. However, in addition to that long-term vision, we also need something that reflects what everyone at UHN does and who we are on a daily basis.
So we are not dropping our vision. We are adding to our vision statement with a more comprehensive (and therefore wordier) description of the purpose we have in coming to work each day. In particular, it is important to me that our purpose should reflect our commitment to Patient-Centered Care (caring) and the fact that we are part of the Toronto community (as well as serving patients from across Canada in some cases). Let's face it, when Banting discovered insulin, the achievement had immense global impact. But most of the patients initially treated were from the Toronto area.
To "give life" to our Purpose Statement, we're developing a UHN Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a tool for the Senior Management Team in setting organizational objectives and targets for each fiscal year, and in measuring progress toward those targets. I want to emphasize that this scorecard approach is not a radical departure in how we manage the organization. We have always emphasized best evidence and good data in leading UHN. The Balanced Scorecard approach is simply a different way of organizing data and ensuring that our direction is consistent with our purpose.
The BSC consists of five equal domains reflecting UHN's key priorities: People (We), Patient-Centered Care & Program Integration (Caring), Research and Innovation (Creative),Resources and System Integration (Accountable), and Teaching(Academic). With each domain, we've identified UHN goals with targets and indicators to track our progress. We will be rolling out the BSC in the next few weeks.
Goal setting is not new to UHN. In many ways, we have simply evolved the processes to ensure that UHN is taking an organization-wide approach to decision-making.
For the UHN BSC to be a success, every staff member has an important role to play. In the coming weeks, Catherine Zahn, Kevin Empey and myself will be meeting with units and departments to talk about the BSC and how you can contribute.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughtful and constructive feedback. I'm excited by the BSC, which will ultimately bring us toward our vision of "Achieving Global Impact!" while we share our purpose on a day-to-day basis.
Bob
