Message from Board Chair Joan Wideman
and President & CEO Rik Ganderton
December 22, 2014
As we enter the holiday season, I want to thank each of you, on behalf
of the Board of Directors, for your ongoing work of delivering outstanding care
to our communities. It has been another busy and exciting year for Rouge Valley
Health System (RVHS).
Our CEO, Rik Ganderton
will end almost eight years of successful
leadership on Dec. 31. The Board has again been able to prevail on Rik to
not cut the ties completely, and he will continue to provide strategic
leadership advice and guidance to the senior team and the board on strategic
matters until the new CEO arrives. Michele James has agreed to continue as acting
CEO while Rik continues to support RVHS remotely. Michele will continue to have
day-to-day operational responsibility. The Board is grateful to Rik for his
visionary leadership and the turnaround of RVHS over the last eight years. He
is leaving the organization in a much better and stronger state than when he
joined in January 2007. It is our intention to celebrate Rik’s leadership
and success at RVHS at an event in the spring, and you will see more
information on this in the New Year.
As you are aware, we have
been conducting a search for Rik's replacement. We are very pleased with the
number and quality of the candidates that have stepped forward. We have held
initial screening interviews with 17 candidates and then selected a short list
of seven for in-depth interviews with the selection committee (Board Executive
Committee, plus Dr. Joanne Ma as President of the Medical Staff Society.) We
now have a shortlist of three absolutely outstanding candidates, and we intend
to make our final selection quickly. It is our hope that the new CEO will be on
the job by the end of March.
While there have been many
exciting events in the last year, the potential merger discussions and work
with The Scarborough Hospital (TSH) took much time and effort from your Board,
physician leadership, senior management team and many others. I want to thank every one of you for
your tireless dedication and the countless extra hours of effort. While the
merger did not proceed in March, we continue to believe strongly that it is the
right thing for our patients and the local health care system. We continue to
work with TSH on several integrations at the program level and are hopeful that
at some point this opportunity can be brought back to the table for the benefit
of our communities.
Perhaps one of the most
important roles of the Board of Directors is to set the Mission, Vision, Values and Strategic Direction of the organization.
We are now in the process of renewing our current 2011 – 2014 Strategic Plan.
To this end, we have created a Board-led Strategic Planning and Branding
committee with representation from the Board; physician leaders and front line
doctors; union leaders; managers; community advisory group members and front
line staff. There is also an Operations committee, which includes an even
broader representation. These committees will be very active along with the new
CEO as we re-examine our Mission, Vision and Values and renew our strategic
direction. A key component of the process is understanding what our existing
brand is and what the gap may be to the brand that we want (brand is not about
name but about how our patients see us and think of us). We see the strategic
plan and the brand as being inextricably linked and that our strategies must
drive us towards brand improvement.
Looking into the future,
we are sure 2015 will be another exciting year for Rouge Valley. We will have a
new CEO to lead us into the future. We will continue to work with our health
system partners to integrate our services and break down silos for the benefit
of our patients. We continue to look at new opportunities and priority
projects to enhance our services to our community. We may again look at organizational
changes and opportunities such as mergers, whether these are vertical (up or
down stream providers) or horizontal with other hospitals.
What we know for sure is
that the health system is continuing to transform and that we want to be and
will be a leader in that transformation.
We will also continue to focus on our patients by ensuring they are at the
centre of all of our decision making.
On behalf of the RVHS
Board of Directors, I wish you and your families a joyous Christmas season, and
best wishes for a safe, healthy and successful 2015 year!
Joan M. Wideman
Chair,
Board of Directors
Rouge Valley Health System
I echo Joan’s thanks to the team. It has been a year of tremendous
effort from every one of you, and I
thank you all for your energy and commitment to making Rouge “the best
at what we do.” As with any look back, there have been a number of highs
and lows. It was clearly a low point when the merger did not proceed given the
benefits we saw and frankly the effort that the teams from both Rouge and TSH
put in to the project. We remain committed to integration and continue to work
with TSH to integrate services for our patients. We also continue to work with
our other health system partners and continue to further integrate services for
the benefit of our communities.
There have also been many
successes in 2014 that we should be proud of and celebrate. The most recent is
the response to the Fairview Lodge fire. Along with our other health system
partners, we were able to react and accommodate some 200 residents across the
system — of which Rouge Valley took 27. Our health system partners were also
able to find new temporary homes for these residents within two weeks of the
fire — a remarkable achievement given the shortage of long-term care capacity.
One of our most exciting
initiatives has been the new bed map.
This has been a unique and innovative approach to managing the continuum of
care for our patients. We have changed from the approach of moving patients to
where the care is to moving care to where the patient is — a totally
patient-centric philosophy. While this sounds simple, it is one of the most
complex and far-reaching change initiatives Rouge has ever undertaken. It has
impacted virtually every aspect of our care delivery processes. I am well aware
that many of you have put in hundreds of hours of effort to make this change
work, and I know that it has been very challenging on occasion. It will
continue to be a challenge as we adjust our care processes to the new approach,
but rest assured, it is making a
positive difference for our patients (and for our staff). For instance, we are
now physically moving patients far less often. This is much safer for patients as it reduces the
risk of handoff errors. It also reduces the infection risk as we are not
regularly changing the environment that a patient experiences. It is also a
better patient experience as the care comes to the patient and the patient is not
physically moved multiple times during his or her stay. It also reduces
workload for staff, such as housekeeping (less cleaning), portering (fewer
moves) and nursing (fewer moves and handoffs).
No look back at 2014 can
be complete without the response to the Ebola
threat, a deadly disease that arose again in West Africa on a huge scale and
which for a time threatened to spread globally. Our domestic and local response
required herculean efforts, and as with most similar situations, there was a
modicum of confusion and wheel spinning before the new processes and procedures
kicked in as a routine. The threat now seems to have diminished substantially,
but ongoing vigilance is required to ensure there is no re-emergence of this or
other similar threats. I wish to thank everyone for their unstinting efforts to ensure the safety of our staff and patients.
On an activity basis, we
continue to experience growth in volumes and/or the complexity of the patients
we are treating. We continue to see periodic surges in activity throughout the
year and are currently experiencing yet another surge. This latest one seems to
be driven by the spiking flu season, which is expected to peak over the
Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Its impact is increased because of the
reduced long-term care capacity caused by the Fairview fire and now the impact
of respiratory and enteric outbreaks in several nursing homes, which means they
are closed to admissions. We will as usual weather this ‘storm,’ but it will
require your patience and continued dedication to serving our patients in the
best way we can.
Rouge continues to develop
the scope and volume of services we provide. Our regional cardiovascular rehabilitation program has continued to
expand and now covers much of the Central East Local Health Integration Network.
It is recognized for its innovation and it is considered as a model for the
province. Its efficacy will be subject to a research study lead by Institute
for Clinical Evaluative Services (ICES), which is very exciting for the
program. Also leading the way in innovation and improving benefits for our
patients is our surgical program. Examples here include the introduction of GreenLightTM lasers for
prostate surgery, greatly increasing the success of these procedures and
greatly reducing patient discomfort and recovery. Our orthopaedic program continues with its innovative ”prehab” approach
for major joint replacements and we are starting to work with our primary care
colleagues in both hip, knee and shoulders to introduce care pathways that span
the typical silos. We continue to recruit new physicians and build our bench
strength for service delivery, and we welcome the 15 new doctors who joined us
in the last year. There is no doubt that the effective relationships between
the Board, management and medical staff is a true differentiator for Rouge.
Last but not least, I must
mention the affiliation agreement with the University
of Toronto, which was signed in the fall. This agreement will help us to
attract new physicians and other clinical staff and offers and exciting partnership
with U of T - Scarborough Campus. While definitive mutual directions have not
been set, we are exploring opportunities in sports medicine, brain imaging and
mental health with our colleagues at the Scarborough campus.
This is also my last
annual message as CEO of Rouge. It has been a pleasure to serve as your CEO,
and I look back with pride at all of the accomplishments that each of you, and
Rouge as an organization, have enjoyed in the last almost eight years. You
should have great pride in the organization you work for and the things you do
every day to serve our patients and be the best at what we do. I wish you all
health, happiness and success in the years to come and I hope that our paths
may cross again in the future. Thank you.
Rik Ganderton
President & CEO
Rouge Valley Health System
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