Good Monday morning,
1. Highlights on UHN's Essentials
UHN's Essentials are essential to the work we do as a leading academic health sciences centre – hence the name!
Read here to learn more. Below, you'll find highlights on UHN's Essentials from last week.
Quality and Safety Southern hemisphere managing a severe flu season and what this means for Ontario: 31,000+ people were diagnosed with the flu in Australia this June compared to 1,900+ around the same time last year (as reported on Global News). Unusual flu season is putting it mildly! While implications for the northern hemisphere remain unclear, UHN is being proactive and raising this issue with the Ministry and Ontario Health and Public Health. I encourage all of TeamUHN to get their flu shot as it becomes available.
People and Culture This past week the Medical Advisory Committee (MAC) leadership met with Brian Hodges (Chief Medical Officer; Executive Vice President, Education) and I in what I hope will become an annual happening. This was an opportunity to review the issues of the past year and look ahead with respect to the needs of the MAC, which is the body charged by our Board to oversee medical quality. Our thanks to Fei-Fei Liu, Patricia Murphy and Flavio Habal for their leadership and commitment.
People and Culture UHN's Princess Margaret Cancer Centre searching for the next Program Medical Director: Our Search Advisory Committee – which is comprised of an interdisciplinary group of colleagues representing the breadth and depth of care, research and education at Princess Margaret – is working to select the next Medical Director of our renowned cancer program. These will be very big shoes to fill as Mary Gospodarowicz completes her distinguished tenure.
Compassionate Care and Caring Adopting a simpler, faster and more effective reporting tool in nursing, replacing the GRASP system: UHN is getting ready to introduce a new tool that will report nursing time spent with each patient (per nurse, per shift) instead of workload. For those wondering, reporting on this activity allows us to secure hospital funding. Congratulations to James Hornibrook (RN, Toronto General Operating Room) for coming up with the name for the tool: PATCH which stands for Patient Allocated Total Care Hours. The tool will launch later this summer and free up valuable time for our nursing colleagues – meaning more time for patients, families and helping each other!
People and Culture The Michener Institute of Education at UHN released their annual
Education Report for 2018/2019 : Take a look to see highlights from the past year. We hope every member of TeamUHN sees themselves as a lifelong learner, teacher and educator. With Michener as part of the UHN family, we are well positioned to meet evolving patient needs and prepare healthcare providers for the clinical and technological advancements of tomorrow.
2. Health Information System (HIS) update: Top-rated proponent identified – next step is the due diligence process
We've completed the evaluation phase of the HIS procurement process and a top-rated proponent has now been identified. We still have confidentiality requirements and will not yet announce the identity of that vendor as we begin the process of entering negotiations which may result in a finalized agreement. Until a final agreement is signed, there is still no official “winner” or final HIS vendor. Confidentially is an integral part of the procurement process and the top-rated proponent must remain confidential until all the required steps are taken. We're doing our due diligence to ensure the right solution can be successfully implemented for patients, clients and families as well as TeamUHN! Stay tuned.
3. What we discussed at our Executive Leadership Forum meeting
Here is what we discussed at last week's meeting (see who attends these meetings
on this Intranet page – and note this forum now includes UHN's Site Vice Presidents including Sue Jewell, Janet Newton, and Fayez Quereshy):
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Budget pressures: We discussed pressures across UHN and what we can do to support programs and areas that are struggling to stay within budget. In the meantime, I'd like to thank all who are working hard to stay within our resources while doing our very best to meet the clinical needs of patients and our scholarly pursuits.
Have a good week,
Kevin
