Office of the Chair

HPME Research Day 2005 – Keynote Speaker Dr. John Birkmeyer

Mark your calendars for Research Day! May 4, 2005

Research day usually begins at 2 pm with student posters and awards, followed by a guest speaker from 5:30-6:30 pm and reception ending at 7 pm. This year's keynote speaker will be Dr. John Birkmeyer, Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan. The title of his talk is "Measuring the quality of hospitals and physicians". Dr. Birkmeyer's research focuses on quality of care, technology assessment, and policy evaluation in the field of surgery. He has received major media attention in the US , for his work on surgical volume and patient outcomes and the use of computerized patient order entry systems to reduce medical error. Dr. Birkmeyer chairs the expert panel on evidence-based hospital referral for the Leapfrog Group and serves as Director of the Surgical Outcomes Research Center at the University of Michigan.

New Books Launched on Home Care Reform and Using Evidence in Healthcare

Almost Home: Reforming Home and Community Care in Ontario. By Patricia M. Baranek, Raisa B. Deber and A. Paul Williams.

Almost Home is a rich and comprehensive study of the policy questions underlying the shift in medical care from hospitals to homes and communities. It analyzes the policy content and process of five attempts, under governments from three political parties, to reform community-based long term care (particularly home care) in Ontario, demonstrating how the ongoing shift from the Medicare 'mainstream' of physician and hospital care to the Medicare 'margins,' entails not only a shift in the site of care but an erosion of the post-war state's role in health care. The authors have made a major contribution to research on Canadian health policy development and change.

Launched on October 27, 2004 by the Medicare to Home and Community Research Unit (M-THAC), Almost Home attracted a large, diverse audience including health researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. Dr. Baranek is currently an independent health policy consultant with an adjunct faculty appointment in the department of HPME. Professors Deber and Williams, Department of HPME, are co-Directors of M-THAC which is funded by the Community Alliances for Health Research Programme of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). Photos of the book launch (Adobe PDF).

Almost Home can be ordered through the University of Toronto Press : Special 20% Discount Order Form (Adobe PDF).

Using Knowledge and Evidence in Healthcare: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. By Louise Lemieux-Charles and Francois Champagne (eds).

At the clinical, management, and policy levels, the use of knowledge and evidence in health care has become a worldwide priority. The contributors to Using Knowledge and Evidence in Health Care seek to broaden our understanding of the complexity involved in health care decision-making by integrating social science knowledge and exploring some of the challenges and limits of evidence in different health care contexts. Editors Louise Lemieux-Charles, Associate Professor and Chair in HPME, and Francois Champagne, Professor of Health Administration at l'Université de Montréal, have brought together the collective wisdom of an esteemed group of social science researchers who participated in the Health Evidence and Application and Linkages Network (HEALNet) from 1995-2002. HEALNet was a member of the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence program whose aim was to improve the health of Canadians by improving healthcare decision-making.

This book is the first of its kind to engage social science perspectives with the predominantly medical literature on the use evidence to improve patient health outcomes. Using Knowledge and Evidence in Healthcare promises to open up the discussion on evidence-based decision-making, increasing its relevance at the levels of management and policy and stimulating new avenues of thought and practice. It is available for purchase through the University of Toronto Press.

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