Office of the Chair

A New Academic Year

2004-2005 promises to be another exciting and challenging academic year. We are very pleased to welcome 36 professional Master's students, 39 research-based Master’s students and 10 PhD students, and now have 273 students enrolled in our graduate programs. HPME is home to a diverse group of students and faculty with a shared commitment to providing the best health care possible for Canadians. The department has 281 faculty, many cross-appointed from other departments and affiliated with teaching hospitals or other health care organizations.

Newsbytes provides a means of keeping in touch with the activities and achievements of HPME students, faculty and alumni. In this issue, we would like to draw your attention to new publications on healthcare restructuring by Colleen Flood et al., Terry Sullivan et al. and Vivek Goel (below), Dr. Adalsteinn Brown’s role in the Ontario Health Transformation Plan (below), recognition for Dr. Ross Baker’s and Dr. Peter Norton’s role in improving patient safety with the Who’s Who in Healthcare Award (Honours and Awards), a research and teaching profile of mental health systems restructuring expert Dr. Paula Goering (Research) and an interview with Dr. Vivek Goel as the new UofT Provost and Vice President (Alumni).

Also, we urge you to mark your calendar now for the HPME Year-End Celebration: December 9, 2004. More details will be provided in the next issue of Newsbytes and on the HPME website.

Dr. Walter Wodchis Takes Up Full-Time Faculty Position

After completing a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI), Dr. Walter Wodchis has now taken up his full-time Faculty position as Assistant Professor in the Department of HPME. He will be teaching finance and accounting to MHSc students. Dr. Wodchis has spent the past year with TRI examining discharge outcomes of short-term stays in complex continuing care organizations. He has submitted applications for New Investigator and Operating Grants to follow-up on his dissertation on the relationship between nursing wages, continuing education and quality of clinical outcomes in nursing homes. His most recent publication, "Physical rehabilitation following Medicare prospective payment for skilled nursing facilities", will appear in the October Issue of Health Services Research. Dr. Wodchis will continue to work closely with the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute as a Research Scientist and with the Institute for Clinical Evaluation as an Adjunct Scientist.

Adalsteinn Brown Appointed to Ontario’s Health Transformation Team

In the September 9, 2004 address by George Smitherman, the Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, the Ontario Health Transformation Plan was laid out. Smitherman announced that a group of seven leaders have been assembled to implement the plan. HPME's Dr. Adalsteinn Brown was appointed as one of seven leaders assembled to guide the implementation of the transformation plan. As Lead of Health Information Management, he and his team will be responsible for creating systems to collect timely and accurate information that will drive informed decision making. This information will be particularly important for measuring and reporting on wait times in Ontario. Dr. Brown’s experience as the principal investigator for the Hospital Report Project is expected to be an asset in this role.

Baker Patient Safety Article Ranks Number One in Longwoods Downloads

In August more than 50,000 individual visits and some 850,000 hits were recorded at www.longwoods.com. Of the top eight articles that were downloaded over the past two years (of some 1200 articles made available in PDF format), Ross Baker and Peter Norton’s Making Patients Safer! Reducing Error in Canadian Healthcare (HealthcarePapers Vol 2, No 1, 2001) ranked number one.

Since the publication of the Canadian Adverse Events Study, Dr. Baker has given numerous talks about the study findings. Most recently, he presented on the challenges and opportunities in implementing a patient safety agenda at the September 13, 2004 Breakfast with the Chiefs. The complete presentation is available through Longwoods.

Dr. Baker will present at the Systems and Processes to Reduce Adverse Events in Canadian Health Care Conference to be held in Toronto on November 1 and 2, 2004.

New HPME Publications on Healthcare Restructuring and Reform

Over the summer of 2004, a number of HPME faculty have had their work on health care restructuring and reform profiled in healthcare journals. The perspectives they put forward are provocative, relevant, insightful and practical for healthcare researcher, policymaker and decision-maker audiences. These papers coincide with the announcement by George Smitherman that the province of Ontario will be moving towards the integration of care across the continuum through the creation of Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). The formation of these geographically bounded networks will facilitate the decentralization of health care planning, coordination and funding while maintaining local accountability for governance within health care delivery organizations.

Colleen Flood and Duncan Sinclair’s commentary, Devolution – A Solution for Ontario. Could the Lone Wolf Lead the Pack? (Healthcare Papers Vol 5, No 1, 2004) identifies a window of opportunity for devolution in the new Ontario liberal government. However, they caution that devolution alone will not lead to increased accountability; there must be clarification of the roles of provincial and federal governments and incentives for improving health care outcomes rather than the processes of delivery.

In their commentary, Reconstructing Cancer Services in Ontario (Healthcare Papers Vol 5, No 1, 2004), Terry Sullivan, Mark Dobrow, Leslee Thompson and Alan Hudson consider how, in the absence of a regional model of health service delivery, cancer organizations in Ontario have come together to regionalize the management of disease.

Vivek Goel reviews and summarizes four major reports recommending the development of a new and improved infrastructure for public health in the feature article, What Do We Do With the SARS Reports? (Healthcare Quarterly Vol 7 No 3, 2004). Dr. Goel urges action on the recommendations in these reports. However, he reminds readers that this action must go beyond the formation of new public health agencies. Real change in the public health system requires greater integration across the health care system, primary care reform and investment in human resources and health informatics.

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