Hello, Boozhoo, Bonjour.

If you have been following the Strategic Plan or recent news on the state of hospital finances across the province, you have a sense of the challenges that we face as we navigate a difficult financial position.
Our Hospital ended the year with a $7.6 million deficit, and the position puts significant pressure on our working capital. We are not alone in that. Hospitals across Ontario are in the same place, for the same reason, and many are in a worse position than we are. Inflation has been outstripping the funding we receive for some time, and that gap is widening. At the same moment, the Hospital is doing the once-in-a-generation work of moving to a new electronic health record – Meditech Expanse, which is excellent from the perspective of modernizing and improving our clinical systems and processes. While we implement a more intuitive and responsive documentation system that improves and integrates information and decision making, we place added stress on other working capital demands and our ability to address other technology needs.

What that means for us, and what I have been spending more of my time on, is the health sector stabilization planning work the Hospital is taking part in with the government. We have been tasked with the difficult task of finding efficiencies while we benchmark our performance and results against peer hospitals. We are doing both. Our current focus is on our organizational efficiency including length of stay, conservable bed days, overtime and sick time. Those are the places where the way we work can be done differently, more efficiently and at the same standard of care.

I want to be clear about the principle guiding this work. We will not be supporting any cuts to programs or care in ways that compromise quality and access. While I cannot promise that no role in this Hospital will change, because we know some will – what I can tell you is that we will work through this period to ensure that the decisions we make are guided by that principle.

Moving ahead, we recognize that some of the most useful ideas about how to do things differently come from you, the people doing the work. If you see something in your area that could be done more efficiently without giving up quality, I want to hear about it. Talk to your manager. Let us know about your ideas. This year, the Hospital needs to be more responsive to those ideas than ever, and this time the moment calls for it.

At the same time, work on the next Strategic Plan is starting. I want this round of engagement to be different from the ones that came before. The questions framing it are simple. What should we keep doing? What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? Come ready to answer them when engagement begins. The plan we write next will only be as good as the conversations that build it. We need you in this process.

Meanwhile, the Cardiovascular Surgery Program marked one year of construction this month. The structural work on the new wing is complete, the building envelope work continues through the summer and interior fit-out begins later this year. If you have walked past the site recently, the difference between June 2025 and today is striking. The work to bring cardiac surgery to Northwestern Ontario by 2028 has not slowed and it will not.
Also, earlier this month, four of our staff were honoured at the Ontario Association of Medical Radiation Sciences provincial awards in Toronto. Recognition at that level is a reminder that the work being done in this building stands up next to the best in the province. Thank you to the team and congratulations to all four.

Finally, on accreditation. Initial information from Accreditation Canada following last month’s survey is positive. Our compliance overall came in about 99 per cent. We expect more detail over the next month or two and I will have more to share once we have had time to review it. Congratulations to everyone. The work I saw on the floors during the survey week is the work I see every day, and that is work to be proud of.

Thank you for what you do.