Dear Colleagues,
I wrote to you last week about the development of a new Strategic Plan - Strategic Directions 2016- for UHN. I am delighted that our new plan will develop organically from our last plan - Strategic Directions 2011 - developed under Tom Closson's leadership - simply because so many of the directions that we developed eight years ago have been very appropriate and because we have achieved so much.
I have attached a table below which shows some of the major themes developed in Strategic Directions 2011. We wanted to improve patient and staff satisfaction, improve our competitiveness in research through fund raising for new Chairs, new space and increasing our research budget - and we have done all that and more!! Indeed, with the development of MaRS, the success of our scientists in CFI grants and the opportunity represented by the Krembil Discovery Centre at TWH- we have dramatically improved our research hospital scientific environment.
We wanted to develop our foundations as engines of innovation at UHN and our Foundation staff have certainly answered the challenge by substantially increasing fund raising. We challenged ourselves to become an international centre for advanced education and training and we have met our goal of increasing international fellowships. The hospital as a whole has nearly doubled its overall revenues more than a year ahead of schedule.
We have not completely met expectations in two areas. We have not yet replaced all of our outdated buildings - although the success of Project 2003 and subsequent renovation and building projects will bring us a long way toward this goal - we still have a lot of work to do in order for our patients to be treated in modern facilities. And our success in commercialization of research has been slower than we hoped - but we recognize now that developing revenues from research discoveries takes a lot of time - more time than we originally predicted.
I think that you will agree that Strategic Directions 2011 has provided an important roadmap for UHN- and that we have accomplished most of the objectives in that plan. So it is clearly time for a new plan that will guide our activities and investments for the next five years. Next week's Straight Talk will describe the "Framework" that Senior Management and the Board has adopted in developing our new plan. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, to get involved and provide feedback, just go to our UHN Strategic Plan 2016 webpage to drop us a line. A link to the webpage has been provided below for your convenience.
Bob
