Presented at RVHS 2011 Annual General Meetings of Members
by RVHS Chief of Staff Dr. Naresh Mohan

It has been a good year for the patients, staff and physicians of Rouge Valley. We were able to maintain and/or exceed our service commitments to the communities we serve in Scarborough, Ajax, Pickering and Whitby.

The Medical Advisory Committee and the medical staff continue their efforts, and focus on quality to ensure that our patients receive the best care possible. They are engaged in helping the organization to meet the growing health care demands of the future.

I am pleased to share with you that due to a number of key initiatives, our hospital standardized mortality ratio continues to remain below 100 indicating that we are performing better than expected for the diseases that are measured; further, we are performing very well compared to other hospitals in the Central East Local Health Integration Network (CE LHIN).

To support the quality initiatives taking place throughout the hospital, an increasing number of my colleagues are becoming trained and involved in various Lean initiatives, such as Kaizen improvement events. A number of our physicians are learning that Lean practices, provide an excellent approach for specific problem solving or patient flow issues as well as helping to foster team-building throughout both campuses of Rouge Valley Health System.

Our physicians continue to work with the LHIN to plan and support for regional care in appropriate areas such as chronic disease management for diabetes, surgical services such as thoracic and vascular care and specialized geriatric care. We continue to be a regional centre for cardiac care and serve the residents of our community with our neonatal and psychiatric expertise.

We have increased our collaboration efforts with our physicians to improve information technologies and support the advancement towards electronic health records. This will improve our linkages with our family physicians in the community as well as help our specialists develop stronger relationships with them to enable us all to access more timely information and provide better patient care.

For 2010–2011, I am pleased to report that we have recruited a number of key specialists to the hospital, including a much-needed neurologist, pathologist, internist, hospitalists, cardiologists, anesthesiologist and radiologists. We continue our recruitment efforts particularly in areas where there are ongoing shortages such as neurology, internal medicine and paediatrics.

Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the members of the medical staff who are no longer with us, including Dr. Joan Atkinson, Dr. Oswald John, both family medicine physicians, and Dr. Thomas Reiss, internist and infectious disease specialist, who passed away.

While our physicians at Rouge Valley are dedicated to the patients in our local community, I would like to also recognize the humanitarian efforts they provide within the global community. Dr. Fathi Abuzgaya, Dr. Mansour Bendago, Dr. Saleem Kassam, Dr. Laurence Lau and Dr. Collin Hong — these physicians put aside time in their busy professional and personal lives to travel to areas where medical services are greatly needed. These physicians put themselves at great personal risk to go to areas such as Libya, China or Haiti to provide their services. Such efforts demonstrate their compassion and sacrifice that go beyond their normal responsibilities of practicing medicine in Canada.

My thanks to our inter-professional group of nurses, allied health, physicians, all staff and volunteers for working effectively as a team during the last year.

I thank our partners at the RVHS Foundation and the many donors who give so generously to initiatives at our two hospital campuses. With such generosity, this helps support our physicians in their day-to-day practices of providing patient care and allows them to use new updated clinical and diagnostic equipment and technologies.

A special thank you to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Rik Ganderton, the senior management team, the Board of Directors of the hospital and of the RVHS Foundation. The leadership and volunteerism of both boards is greatly appreciated by our team of physicians.

I would also like to recognize the dedicated group of medical leaders and medical administrative team, who work alongside me. Together, we continue to work collaboratively to improve the patient care experience and strive to provide the best care possible for our patients.