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(Dan McGann) On today's show, feedback from the front lines
on the voluntary merger, we'll tour the new
Ronald McDonald Family Room,
our French Family Health Team officially opens,
and we relay for life.
Hi. I'm Dan McGann. Welcome to "Contact."
Now that the Credit Valley Hospital
and Trillium Health Centre have merged
to become one organization, we spoke to two people
providing key leadership during this time.
Alan Torrie is the Chair of the Board of Directors
for the new merged hospital.
He joined the Trillium board in 2008 and served as the Vice
Chair and the Chair of the Quality Committee
before assuming his new role.
Michelle DiEmanuele is our new President
and Chief Executive Officer.
She has spent her career in the public and private sectors,
leading large-scale change and cultural transformation.
Here now are their insights on what the merger means
to staff, patients, and the entire community.
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The people of Mississauga will have seamless access
to services across the network of the hospitals,
and the information will follow the patient about that patient.
And that will allow everybody to get to the problem quicker
and get it solved faster.
So I think this merger presents an outstanding
opportunity for our region.
As you know, we've had a history of two great hospitals
delivering outstanding care, but coming together provides us
a huge opportunity for the future to be able to be
a regional centre delivering state-of-the-art health care
close to home.
We'll be able to pool our resources,
our physical resources, our equipment resources,
our people resources in a way to deliver care into the future
that we could never have done as a single hospital.
For example, we're looking at a robotics program.
A robotics program could provide
state-of-the-art surgical interventions in the areas
of cancer that either hospital alone would
not have been pursuing.
Quality is very good today, but it'll be more sustainable
and even better in the future because of the ability
to attract people to this expanded platform,
the skills and expertise of physicians
and other health care workers, and of course, our affiliation
with the University of Toronto Medical School.
Even in the early days of being president of the new
hospital, I've seen great opportunity to be able to share
experiences so that we can all elevate our performance
in delivering outstanding patient care in this community.
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Well, both hospitals, before they decided to merge, were
contemplating their vision of the future, and as it turned
out, they both had the same vision, and that vision was
to create one integrated community-based health centre
with academic capability that gave a platform for being able
to sustain health care for this community well into the future.
I think there are three or four things that we have
to continue to hold at the centre of what we do.
One is a seamless patient experience.
It shouldn't matter which door you come through.
How you are treated in any of these sites, how your care is
administered should be the same at the same standard
and quality and level that you would get at any of the sites.
And I think that has to continue to be
at the centre of everything we do.
Secondly, I think our community expects us to do this in
an efficient, effective way with high integrity, and we will
continue to use our resources in the most efficient way
to deliver that highest patient experience.
I think thirdly, we have to constantly look to the future,
and so it isn't just bringing two hospitals together
and one plus one equals two.
It has to be one plus one equals three.
What growth, how can we be thinking about the future
of health care in our local community so that we are
constantly offering a high level of services that are relevant.
And lastly, I think we have to think about our relationship
with the University of Toronto and our new medical school.
This provides an opportunity for us to grow the future
generations of physicians who hopefully will stay here
and practice locally in their community.
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So if I look out a year in our new hospital, if I take it
from a very simple perspective, I hope everybody starts to talk
about this as one hospital and one patient experience,
and we have a name.
And that people understand the things that we're focused on,
two or three critical things that are going to help us
be better for the future.
If a year out, we're able to do those two or three things,
I think we will have had great success.
It's really difficult in health care to predict
what it's gonna look like 5 years from now,
because technology, services, and capabilities are changing
in the field so rapidly.
But there are a few things that for sure I know that people
will experience 5 years from now that will be better than today.
One is access, seamless access to an integrated system.
Timeliness of getting to the bottom of issues
because of the information and technology
and the capability of the staff.
And the programs and services that perhaps aren't as readily
available close to home will be much closer to home and
provided right in our backyard.
When I look out 5 years, I think about we've been able
to deal with the unprecedented growth in the City
of Mississauga, West Toronto, and our region
of Halton-Mississauga.
That, you know, we have been growing at 7%, 8%, 9%, and 10%
in some of our programs and that that growth has been dealt
with because we've constantly been asking ourselves
how best to deliver care.
And that gets measured by reductions in wait times
and in a reduction of people having to go outside of
our region for care, that we really are delivering
the best care in as many different areas
closest to home.
That, for me, 5 years from now would be a success factor.
When I look internal to the organization, we will have
attracted some of the best and brightest clinicians
in our province and in our country.
They'll want to come work here because this is a hospital that
provides the best platform to deliver services with the best
people to deliver it with, and so being able to attract
world-class physicians, nurses, and researchers,
those kinds of indicators would be there for us.
We're already seeing some of those benefits occurring today
because of the merger, and we'd see more and more of that.
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You know, I think that we are really embarking upon
something unique here.
Our vision is to become a premiere community-based,
patient-centric, academic health centre for Canada.
And it's got all the implications of being
a leader rather than a follower.
And so as I think about the future and as I think about
the past, it's one that is both motivating, and it's one
that is of high integrity, of high accomplishment,
of great success, and I am truthfully humbled
and excited to be able to work with 8,000 people
who every single day are gonna come through our doors
to deliver outstanding care and services to our community.
Health care is changing rapidly, and if we lead that
change and be in front of it through the capability we have
with these merged institutions, then we'll be able to provide
a more effective, more efficient, higher-quality
health care system for the community than
it would have otherwise.
So the journey's going to be about that.
It's going to be getting to that destination,
and once we get there, discovering what's next.
And I think that journey will be a challenging one,
but it's very worthwhile.
And it's gonna be a lot of fun for the people that are working
in the institution, and it's gonna be a great benefit
to the community we serve.
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