Alumni

Electronic Society of Graduates Newsletter Launched

The Society of Graduates is launching its first electronic newsletter in June 2004. This new format is intended to keep alumni in closer touch with one another and with the department, creating a 'virtual community' of HPME. If you are an alumnus of HPME and would like to update your contact information or submit news for the September issue, please contact Lisa Newman at lisa.newman.a@utoronto.ca .

Alumni Education Day

The Society of Graduates Education Day was held on May 19, 2004. The topic – "Leadership and Managing Uncertainty, Finding the Opportunities" – and the speakers were extremely timely: Professor Ross Baker presented on the Canadian Study of Adverse Events just days before results were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and released to the public. Other speakers, Doris Grinspun of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario and John Morris of Borden Ladner Gervais law firm have been in the news as well on the issue of how to prevent and how to deal with adverse events. The panel discussion was moderated by HPME Chair Louise Lemieux-Charles . Once again those who attended enjoyed the pleasant surroundings of Islington Golf Club. Congratulations to Rob Crawford and Anne Wojtak and their committee for a well planned and stimulating Education Day.

Please visit the Alumni Newsletter online for photos.

Shirlee Sharky Profiled in Healthcare Quarterly

Shirlee Sharky, President and CEO of Saint Elizabeth Health Care and alumnus of the HPME MHSc program (class of ‘92) was one of four leaders in healthcare asked to comment on their toughest assignments and the lessons they learned by the editors of Healthcare Quarterly. Sharkey discusses the challenges of creating a culture of innovation in the sometimes risk-averse healthcare environment. However, by working with staff to integrate innovation into daily work life, Sharkee has helped to spark “innovation fever” within the organization. To find out more, see the complete article in Healthcare Quarterly, Volume 7, Issue 2 for link to "Insight (PDF-104K) – If You Want to Learn; Take on the Most Difficult Problem".

Jackie Whittingham Takes on New Director Position at WoodGreen Community Services

Jackie Whittingham, alumnus of the HPME MHSc program (Class of ‘03) has accepted a position as Director of Neighbourhood Services and Homeward Bound at WoodGreen Community Services. This program provides housing counseling and job training for homeless single mothers. Her new position will draw on her combined social services (MSW) and health sector expertise. She will be leaving her position as Senior Health Planner with the Toronto District Health Council where she has been since 1998. Much of her time with the TDHC was spent on projects focusing on child health. She led the TDHC planning initiative for children with complex care needs as well as the Child Health System Planning Project. Jackie also facilitated several collaborative initiatives. She managed the GTA Child Health Network during its transition from the Hospital for Sick Children sponsorship to its current self-sustaining status and chaired the TDHC sponsored Toronto Palliative Care Network Transition Committee.

Alumni Profiles

Alumni of the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (HPME) are involved in a broad range of leadership activities across the health care sector. To promote greater awareness of the many accomplishments and innovations of this diverse group, we are pleased to include alumni profiles as a regular feature of NewsBytes. This issue features Mr. Tony Dagnone , President and CEO of the London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario.

Tony Dagnone: Health Care is a Team Sport

“Health care is a team sport,” says Tony Dagnone, and he should know. As well as being a highly effective Hospital CEO for over 25 years, he has been very active in his community, including helping to host the Brier and chairing the 1989 Canada Summer Games, when Saskatoon hosted 3,000 high performance young athletes.

Tony's personal values of integrity, hard work and respect underlie his approach to administration. A fundamental task of administration, he believes, is to build working relationships over time (“it's a marathon, not a sprint”) and he pays particular attention to fostering collaboration among hospital, community and government (at both the provincial and the federal levels). Consistently hiring managers who are team players, he stresses the long-term benefits of building good working relationships both within the organization and outside it.

CEO of Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital from 1977 till 1992, Tony took pride in instituting Canada's first hospital foundation, for the local community to fund hospital items not funded by government. Saskatchewan's NDP government of the day, the founders of Medicare, took great exception to this idea initially and roundly criticized it in the provincial legislature. With time, however, the government relented and the Saskatoon hospital foundation became a model for many more to follow, till today.

Arriving in London, Ontario as CEO of University Hospital, Dagnone was glad to find many similarities there to the city he had left behind. London, though a bit bigger than Saskatoon, still felt small and the hospital's location on a university campus was familiar to him. In less than three years Tony became CEO of London Health Sciences Centre, the merged entity combining three hospitals. Currently he is leading LHSC in consolidating its three sites into two, as well as rejuvenating some facilities and completing new building.

Dagnone's family origins are in the Campo Basso region of Italy, between Rome and Naples, from where, in the depressed economic times of the late nineteenth century, his grandfather left his subsistence farm, all alone, and came to Canada to work for the CPR. From Saskatchewan grandfather Dagnone soon informed his family that their future was here. Tony arrived at age nine without a word of English, and was placed in grade one where bullies were only too ready to make fun of a newcomer; he addressed these challenging situations in typically straightforward, Tony fashion: “like everything else, you got over it – you stood up for your rights”.

Flash forward some years - as a new B.Comm., Tony was eager to get into the big world of business, but a research assistant job for his health care professor, and the advent of universal Medicare changed his path and led him instead into hospital administration. He completed the University of Toronto Graduate Diploma in hospital administration before returning to Saskatchewan. He continues to have a soft spot for Toronto and for the university and maintains a connection with the HPME Department.

From his student days, when he wrote his thesis on hospital mergers, Tony has been concerned to foster more collaboration and less duplication in our health care system. He is especially proud of the strong working relationships developed among the London hospitals and with the local community; London, he says, is a ‘poster' community for voluntary [ i.e ., not government-imposed] collaboration in health care. As a result of this exemplary collaboration, comprehensive health care programs exist that allow 96% of all patients in southwestern Ontario to be cared for in their own region., with the other 4% being those patients who require very highly specialized, esoteric kinds of care. Tony is Chair of the Ontario Hospital Association.

Tony has broad experience in governmental relations; asked for advice on how to work successfully with the Ministry, he counsels to establish one's credibility, be consistent, present evidence to back up your case and document needs. Above all, he hearkens back to the need to build a team relationship, with the Ministry included on the team.

Tony is devoted to his family (two daughters have very active careers in business, with the third completing an Ivey MBA) and continues to be very involved with his community, including sitting regularly as a Citizenship Court judge. Many honours have been bestowed on Tony, most notably the Order of Canada (1992) and the Queen's Jubilee Medal (2003). A leader who is deeply involved in his community, Tony really is a team player.

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