I recently received the suggestion that we could enhance these messages with some changes in format. While I'm not sure that there will be additional readership, the photo might help some of you recognize me in the halls. If you see me, please introduce yourself and tell me what you like about working here and what would make it better. I have met so many wonderful people in the UHN community in our hallways, tunnels, and elevators!

The savings suggestions that have come forward from across UHN have been divided into 5 categories – Waste, Management of People, SIMS & Telecommunications, Clinical, and Changes in Business Practices. The Executive team has looked at all the suggestions and a smaller group is now considering how we might implement some of these great ideas. Joy Richards, Vice-President Health Professions & Chief Nurse Executive tells me that she asked two questions of a group of her nursing colleagues. "How many of you throw out supplies from a patient room?"  "How many of you send patients home with supplies and drugs?"  Virtually every hand in the room went up to both questions. So, we have to consider how best to work across UHN to avoid the expense and waste of throwing out supplies. We will also have to look at how best to plan discharges so that the Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) is ready and the required supplies are in the patients' homes. To realize these savings, we'll need your support to change individual practice and we will need to work to enhance our collaboration with the CCAC team that is embedded in UHN.

The date of our Annual General Meeting is June 17th, starting at 4:00 p.m. in the MaRS Auditorium. It is five months since I joined UHN and so I will be giving a summary of what I have learned to date and some thoughts about where we will be going in the major areas of our mission including patient care, research, and education. Our contribution to the community that we serve and our moral obligation to society in Canada is linked to our progress in these three pillars of our mission.

I also want to congratulate UHN's HumanEra Group for winning an international award for patient safety. The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), an organization that represents a diverse community of nearly 7,000 professionals who support the development, management, and use of safe and effective healthcare technology, has awarded UHN the AAMI & Becton Dickinson's Patient Safety Award for significant advancement in patient safety. The team won this award for its work on standardizing practices on multiple-line intravenous infusions to help prevent adverse patient events.

Great teams like our HumanEra group at UHN's Centre for Global eHealth Innovation will be a critical part of our journey to reduce preventable harm to patients and staff at UHN.

Peter​

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