From the Burgundy Chairs

Episode 8: Donna Duncan on Long-Term Care Before, During and Post COVID-1

The Ontario Long Term Care Association’s Wave 2 Action Plan for long-term care consists of 11 elements that aim to ensure long-term care homes have what they need moving forward to prevent and contain COVID-19. In this episode, Donna Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA), joins Patrick Nelson to look back at lessons learned from the first wave of the pandemic and look forward to the measures needed to protect Ontario’s seniors and those who care for them.

 

Donna Duncan is the CEO of the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA); the largest association representing long-term care providers in Canada. OLTCA represents almost 70% of Ontario's 637 long-term care homes, located in communities across the province. These homes provide care and accommodation to more than 70,000 residents annually. Donna is a passionate and experienced broader public sector executive and board director, with deep expertise in defining and leading successful transformational organization and system change initiatives in health care and post-secondary education. Donna has served as the interim CEO of The Ontario Caregiver Organization and, from 2010-2017, served as the President and CEO of the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, a large children’s mental health treatment, research and teaching centre.

Episode 7: Innovation in Times of Uncertainty

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges and, at the same time, a unique opportunity to embrace digital health solutions. Responding to COVID-19 requires swift and innovative thinking, and although digital health has been on governments’ radars for decades, progress has been slow.

Is the pandemic an opportunity to address the longstanding gaps in health technology? Will it motivate governments to procure and distribute innovation more efficiently? Or will buy in become a greater challenge due to the increased uncertainty that we are all experiencing?

In this episode, Inder Singh, Founder and CEO of Kinsa, and Dr. Sacha Bhatia, Chief Medical Innovation Officer at Women’s College Hospital, join Ross Wallace to discuss digital health care amidst the pressures of a global pandemic.

Inder Singh is the Founder and CEO of Kinsa, a public health company with a mission to stop the spread of contagious illness through earlier detection and earlier response. Prior to founding Kinsa, Inder was the Executive Vice President of the Clinton Foundation’s Health Access Initiative. In this role, he helped two million people access lifesaving HIV, malaria and tuberculosis medications by negotiating lower priced drugs and diagnostics in 70 developing nations. He also holds five academic degrees from Harvard – MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard’s Kennedy School, MIT Sloan and the University of Michigan.

Dr. Sacha Bhatia, Chief Medical Innovation Officer and F.M. Hill Chair in Health System Solutions at Women’s College Hospital studies the appropriateness of care, digital health innovations and health service design. Dr. Bhatia leads rigorous evaluation of digital health tools to move new models and policy approaches from theory to implementation, evaluation and spread, and scale across Canada. Dr. Bhatia is an award-winning cardiologist and he received both his MD and MBA in Health Care Administration from McGill University.

Episode 6: The Federal Fiscal Snapshot. What Does it Mean and What’s Next for Canada?

On July 8, the federal Liberal government updated the country on Canada’s finances. This fiscal snapshot was unlike any other as it arrived after four months of reactionary spending as the Trudeau Government responded to COVID-19. As the government moves beyond the emergency phase of its response and into a new recovery phase, what can we expect next? Will we see the budget originally drafted for March of this year make its way to the House this fall? Does the government have the confidence of the opposition parties to continue to navigate these uncharted times? In this episode, Peter Cleary, Stephanie Gawur and Ian Chesney unpack the economic outlook provided by Finance Minister Bill Morneau to Canadians yesterday. They discuss the issues the federal government will be tasked with this fall as health care organizations and providers brace for a potential second wave of COVID-19.

Episode 5: Dr. Naveed Mohammad on a Path Forward for Ontario’s Hospitals

Building capacity in Ontario’s hospitals has been a core pillar in the province’s COVID-19 response. More than three months after the provincial government declared a state of emergency, the question is, how are our hospitals holding up? How are they navigating this next — somewhat uncertain — phase in Ontario’s health care transformation plans? In this episode, Dr. Naveed Mohammad, President and CEO of William Osler Health System, sits down with Dan Carbin to discuss system capacity, health equity, and hallway health care amidst the pressures of a global pandemic. Dr. Naveed Mohammad was appointed President and CEO of William Osler Health System in April 2020. Osler is one of Canada’s largest community hospital systems, serving 1.3 million people living in a fast growing and culturally-diverse region. Dr. Mohammad joined Osler in 1997 as an emergency physician at Etobicoke General and has held a number of progressively senior physician leadership roles. Most previously, Dr. Mohammad was Osler’s Executive Vice-President, Quality, Medical and Academic Affairs.

Episode 4: Susan Fitzpatrick on What’s Next for OHTs

Almost a year and a half ago, Ontario introduced its large-scale plan to integrate health care providers with the goal of creating a patient focused and streamlined system. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the province just a few months after the first Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) were announced in December 2019.

In this episode, Keltie Gale, Senior Consultant at Santis Health, and Susan Fitzpatrick explore what Ontario's health transformation agenda might look like with the pressures of COVID-19. How will OHTs support the province’s COVID-19 response? How will ongoing issues, including system capacity and virtual care, be addressed?

Susan Fitzpatrick has over 30 years of experience in Ontario’s health care system. She was appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer of Ontario Health and as the inaugural CEO, Susan led the province’s newest health agency through one of the largest mergers in recent health history. In 2015, Susan was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network and just a few weeks ago, Susan joined the Santis Health team as a Senior Advisor. 

Episode 3: Dr. Samir Sinha on Seniors and COVID-19

We know older adults are at a higher risk for developing more serious complications from COVID-19 — so why are we seeing outbreaks in senior populations? In this episode, Dan Carbin and Dr. Samir Sinha explore the systemic vulnerabilities and the “double standard” in curbing the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Samir Sinha is a longtime advocate for the needs of older adults. He currently serves as the Director of Geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto and as the Peter and Shelagh Godsoe Chair in Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 2012, he was appointed by the Government of Ontario to serve as the expert lead of Ontario’s Seniors Strategy. Dr. Sinha is also an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Family and Community Medicine, and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Episode 2: Maureen Taylor on COVID-19

In this episode, we called Physician Assistant and former journalist, Maureen Taylor, to discuss the lessons learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak and how Canada is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic 17 years later. Maureen Taylor is a Physician Assistant specializing in infectious diseases at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto. She has worked at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre as a Physician Assistant in Emergency Medicine, and was named Physician Assistant of the Year by the Canadian Association of Physician Assistants in 2016. Prior to this, Maureen was an award-winning broadcast journalist for 25 years, including seven years as the health reporter for the CBC.

Episode 1: Ontario's Mental Health and Addictions Strategy

Veronica Said, a Consultant at Santis Health, sits down with Dr. Sarah Jarmain and Adrienne Spafford to discuss Roadmap to Wellness, the Ontario Government's recently announced mental health and addictions strategy. In this episode, we discuss the current state of addictions and mental health care in Ontario, what the strategy gets right, where the strategy could improve and how the sector is responding. Dr. Sarah Jarmain, MD, FRCPC is the Site Chief Mental Health Care, Chair Medical Advisory Committee and Director Medical Quality at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Western University. Adrienne Spafford is the Chief Executive Officer of Addictions and Mental Health Ontario (AMHO). Prior to joining AMHO, Adrienne held senior roles in both government and membership associations.