Print Handheld Contrast

Message from Cliff Nordal, President and Chief Executive Officer London Health Sciences Centre

2010 Annual Community Meeting
Tuesday, June 22

Check against delivery.

I want to start by thanking Bob Siskind for volunteering his time, energy and leadership as the Board Chair. I know Bob, you have many stories to tell about serving as a steward of healthcare in this community, and I want to personally thank you for your dedication to advancing healthcare in London. I would also like to acknowledge the entire Board of Directors, who give generously of their time and expertise to help guide our organization.

My thanks to Bob Siskind for his tremendous leadership.

I would also like to welcome incoming Board Chair, Peter Johnson. I look forward to working with Peter over the next few months.

Today, I am going to spend some time looking back over the year to comment on a few of the many things we are working on as we reach a major milestone in 2011. This year was not without its challenges but opportunities for improvement are always welcomed and embraced and we have done just that.

If you’ve been to our annual meeting in the past couple of years, you may have come to appreciate the Holdsworth Auditorium for its rich history as a site for celebrations, dances, sporting events, meetings and so on. I encourage you to read the Holdsworth story posted beside the plaque near the entrance. It’s an intriguing tale of compassionate care, romance, adventure, tragedy and honour that starts and ends right here at South Street Hospital.

Next year, it’s quite likely that the annual community meeting will be celebrated in the new North Tower at Victoria Hospital. The 300-seat auditorium on the second level will be a leading edge, state of the art space and I know that many of us are anxious to have a large teaching space there and excited to see its technology in action.

I like to say we are in year 13 of a 5-year restructuring program. It’s taken longer than we would have hoped but the results are going to be far greater than originally envisioned – consolidated programs, outstanding facilities, smoother access to care and a major step in our journey of creating a true system where patients receive the care they need at the right time and in the right place. The future for healthcare in London has never been more exciting.

In fact LHSC, along with St. Joseph's and Infrastructure Ontario, released a request for qualifications earlier this month to build and finance the final phase of renovations to LHSC’s Victoria and University Hospital sites, as well as St. Joseph’s Hospital.
This finishing phase is called Milestone 2 Phase 3 and represents the final chapter of the acute care health care restructuring journey.
As you know today’s theme is It’s in Our DNA. For more than 135, years London Health Science Centre has been at the forefront of discovery and patient care in London and around the world. This proud tradition of caring and innovation continue everyday in the work so many of you do alongside your colleagues.

It’s through the tremendous dedication and commitment of our staff, physicians and scientists that we can proudly declare we are caring for the community and innovating for the world. Later in the program, our keynote speaker, Dr. David Hill is going to share with you the unique innovations and medical firsts that happened at South Street Hospital, formerly known as Victoria Hospital.

Since 1948 we have achieved over 50 Canadian, North American and world firsts. We’ve also gone from caring for less than 250 patients in 1876 to over one million patient visits last year. Today that spirit of innovation continues as we advance health care on a number of fronts including personalized medicine, minimally invasive surgeries and the list goes on....

Closing South Street Hospital to all patient care by this time next year is very exciting and welcomed. I know that we have some work to do to ensure the legacy of care and innovation is celebrated and honoured as we complete the final program transfers. Stay tuned as we roll out the plan for staff reunions and community celebrations to mark the locking of the doors of South Street.

While we may no longer provide patient care at South Street we are not abandoning the SOHO neighbourhood. Close to 400 employees will continue to work in the former nurses’ residence and the Education Building. The land upon which South Street Hospital sits was originally leased from the City of London in 1877 and while most of land belongs to the City, the majority of the buildings belong to the hospital. We have a framework and principles in place to work with the City on the next steps for the hospital site.

We have been actively working with the City, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and other partners to resolve the decommissioning of South Street in the best interest of the community.

Meanwhile, the moves into the North Tower and between St. Joe’s and LHSC continued this past year according to the M2P2 schedule. These included: the Ivey Eye Institute; the Ear, Nose and Throat Clinics; Nuclear Medicine; Pharmacy; the Plastic Surgery and Urology outpatient clinics; the renal dialysis clinic; and, the joint replacement clinic.

By June 2011, 28 services and programs and over 2,500 staff and physicians will have moved locations. This is on top of the 30 program transfers and the 2,500 staff moved to complete Milestone 1 in June 2005. The feedback as a result of the moves to date has been overwhelmingly positive as staff and patients embrace the new and improved facilities. Designed for health care in the 21st century, London’s facilities will provide the perfect backdrop for our mission of care and innovation.

In fact, I’d like to share with you a short video, produced by London Health Sciences Foundation that demonstrates the excitement that is building as we get closer to many programs and in this case specifically, mental health and women and children’s care into the North Tower.

To ensure we are ready for these opportunities we are following the recently approved and refreshed strategic directions. Details about the plan are in your Annual Report and available on our website. Key new initiatives include Vision 2020 which is a forward thinking exercise to ensure we are planning for the future both in terms of our clinical services and the supporting master facility plan.

Of course, closely linked to the clinical and facilities plans is our enabling technology plan. Technology is one of the catalysts for changing the future of healthcare by making it safer and more efficient, as well as accessible and responsive to patients.

Like Vision 2020, the ET Plan creates a pathway to the future; helping us to better meet the needs of our staff, physicians and patients.
While preparing for the future is critical, we are equally focused on current challenges like ensuring our hospital acquired infection rates are among the lowest in Canada. We have made improvements on a number of fronts including changes to cleaning standards and practices and the recent launching of the Surviving Sepsis campaign.

We also saw significant improvement this year in our hand hygiene results with an increase of over 40% compliance. Public reporting on initiatives such as this is important to maintain transparency and accountability in the health care system. We welcome the shift to increased public reporting, recognizing that it often requires a change in practice or even in the way we capture information.

We continue to work with our regional partners and the southwest LHIN to improve access to care at LHSC. We do not want to be in the business of caring for patients in hallways, cancelling surgeries or forcing people to wait in ambulances as we struggle to find empty beds. Caring for the right patient at the right time and in the right hospital is a major goal of all heath care providers in the southwest region as we try to manage demand with capacity. We look forward to working with the LHIN and all health care providers on the development of a more integrated health services system to best meet the needs of our community and our patients.

When we talk to our patients and their families we always hear that it’s not the buildings, facilities or equipment that impresses them so much as our people who work tirelessly to deliver high quality care. On a weekly basis I receive letters of gratitude from people who have received care at London Health Sciences Centre. Respect and compassion are key themes of these letters.

Not surprisingly, investing in our people is also a critical component of the strategic plan.

Last year we launched a Talent Management Program to ensure we are developing aspiring leaders to take LHSC into the future and to carry on the tradition of leading innovation.

Consider for example the rapid response of our physicians, staff and leaders during the second wave of the H1N1 pandemic in late October and November. Our hospitals saw an unprecedented surge in emergency room visits with the Children's Hospital Emergency Department facing a 200% increase. Physicians and staff moved quickly to establish an overflow assessment clinic, and the Incident Management Team adjusted visiting guidelines, screening process and communicated daily to help guide our response while protecting patients and staff.

We also celebrated our people this year with the President’s Awards. In addition to the Community Service Award and the two awards for demonstrating our core values of respect, trust and collaboration, we expanded the program to acknowledge outstanding leadership at London Health Science Centre. Less than two weeks ago, I hosted a ceremony and awarded the following people with the 2010 President’s Awards.

• Vimla Harry- Molecular Pathology Technologist for Outstanding Community Volunteer Service.
• Kathy Rosser, Communications Clerk for Core Values, How We Work Together
• Brenda Cannon, Switchboard for Core Values, How We Serve Our Patients
  and
• Monique Prendergast, Manager, Physiotherapy Practice for Leadership.

Congratulations to all of you and thank you for coming today.

As Bob mentioned earlier, to be innovative you need to embrace change and new ways of doing things. Last year, we achieved another Canadian first - this time in the treatment of lung cancer. Surgeon and clinical researcher Dr. Richard Malthaner and oncologist Dr. Edward Yu removed a small cancerous wedge from a patient’s lung and then applied a surgical mesh interwoven with brachytherapy seeds to where the lung was resected.

Brachytherapy is the use of small radioactive seeds to treat cancer. They look like metallic grains of rice and the ones used in this operation are normally used to treat prostate, breast and skin cancers.

I understand the patient received a check up just last month and I I’ve been told there are no signs of recurrence and the patient has rejoined his baseball team, which was one of his major goals.

As further evidence of innovation at LHSC, Cancer Care Ontario recently awarded a research chair worth $1 million over five year to Dr. Richard Kim for his important work in the area of Experimental Therapeutics. Our London Regional Cancer Program in partnership with the University of Western Ontario was also awarded a Recruitment License which will be used to recruit a Cancer Translational Imaging Scientist to work in the new Baine Centre for Translation Cancer Research in collaboration. This is a significant step forward in advancing translational cancer research in London.

This spring our Operating Rooms implemented the use of a new surgical safety checklist as a way of enhancing patient safety. The checklist is designed to increase and improve communication between physicians, nurses, and patients to prevent mistakes.

Our surgical leaders are working diligently to adopt the checklist and make it standard practice in our ORs. It goes without saying that new processes can take several months to implement and to achieve the compliance we want and frankly, expect.

Personally I believe in the power of checklists. Let me share a non-health care example with you.

I am sure you remember the story about Captain Sullenberger or Sully, who safely ditched US Airlines Flight 1549 (fifteen forty-nine) into the Hudson River in New York after hitting some Canadian geese in January 2009.

Of course no one can doubt Captain Sully’s flying skills; however, Sully himself has credited his co-pilot and the crew’s calm step-by-step review of multiple checklists as critical to the safe landing and evacuation of the plane.

From the time the plane left the runway to the evacuation was just under 7 minutes. An incredible example of the safety benefits of a well practiced checklist but, even more important, an example of an effective and prepared team working together through trust, respect and collaboration, which also happen to be the core values at LHSC.

I believe this same spirit of working together and using checklists can improve safety in our operating rooms and throughout the hospital. We will report our checklist use on our website every six months starting at the end of July.

As you know, I announced that I will soon be retiring. My focus over the next few months will be to continue moving our organization forward in key areas such as:

• Our Quality Strategy and Plans
• The initial planning required for next year’s F2011/12 budget
• Implementing our Strategic Planning – including the enormous efforts underway to complete our next restructuring milestone

I will also finalize the F2010/11 budget. The South West LHIN has advised us that the proposed allocation for LHSC is an increase to base funding of 1.46%. We expect to receive the formal allocation letter early in July and we will then have six weeks to reassess and confirm budget strategies, obtain Board approval and submit a final balanced budget for 2010/11 to the LHIN.

In the meantime, leaders are implementing the board approved strategies in the areas of cost avoidance, revenue generation and improvement efficiencies. Although some of these strategies have impacted staff and how we provide services, they must be implemented to meet budget requirements and ensure our hospital is operating as efficiently as possible when compared to other hospitals.

I must also acknowledge efforts to ensure we avoided a deficit position at our fiscal year end on March 31, 2010. Thanks to the diligence of our leaders and physicians we remained within the overall corridor for our funded volumes. This required clinical slowdowns at Christmas and March break among other initiatives.

Overall at LHSC the year end financial results included a total accounting surplus of $23 million largely from equipment amortization and the sale of land. From an operating perspective we ended the year with a small $4.5 million surplus due to a one time pharmacy drug rebate and a freeze on all capital spending.

I’m also pleased that we have begun the new fiscal year with a solid leadership team in place that includes some new faces, such as:

• Karen Belaire, Shared Chief Operating Officer, Clinical,
• Bruce Hirst, Chief Financial Officer; and,
• Roy Butler, Integrated Vice President, Quality, Strategy and Performance.

They join the already strong and dedicated senior leadership team. I would like to personally thank them, as well as the medical leadership at LHSC, for always advancing our goals and priorities. I know they will significantly contribute to a successful orientation and transition for LHSC's new CEO.

In closing, I can honestly say that the highlight of my career has been my time in London, including the past five years as the shared CEO. The staff of LHSC went over and above in terms of welcoming me to the organization and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of such a caring and innovative hospital.

It has been and continues to be a privilege to work at London Health Sciences Centre - a place where caring and innovation is in our DNA.
Thank you.

---