With FOI legislation coming into effect for Ontario hospitals, UHN has posted the contract for CEO and President, Dr. Bob Bell, in keeping with practices at other hospitals across Ontario. Dr. Bell sent the following "Straight Talk" message to all staff this morning regarding the contract and UHN's approach to FIPPA.
Dear Colleagues,
As you'll see in media stories, the Freedom of Information legislation came in to effect yesterday in Ontario's hospitals and the initial focus is on executive contracts and, as happens every April, my salary and contract are in most of the stories. Rita Burak, the Chair of the Board of Trustee's Governance and Nominating Committee, is our spokesperson on executive compensation as the Board of Trustees negotiates the contract of the CEO and approves the compensation for the senior team.
While the focus today is on employment contracts, I would urge you to look at the links below as Freedom of Information is about a lot more than the information covered in most of the stories and I think UHN has done a good job of gathering together the information that people might want and helping people make requests for that information and/or providing it to them immediately on the website. The point of the legislation is to help people understand how we work, what we do and how we measure the value of our work. UHN is an open organization, being the first hospital in Ontario to publish its wait times, infection control statistics, patient survey results, and quality reports in around 2004.
As I've written before, we do have a process in place to assist people with their requests through the Privacy Office. Ron Ward is our expert and FOI requests should be brought to his attention so that we may respond appropriately as required by the legislation.
Bob