Guess who's speaking in this excerpt from comments made at the announcement of the approval of the new West Wing project at Trillium Health Centre Sept. 1:
"How many of us here today, as a patient or a family member, have experienced our health system in the past five years? I, for one, have had those experiences personally or through family members and we all know we have a lot of work to do. Our system is plagued by access issues, poor information, cramped environments, concerns about safety. We know that the status quo is unacceptable. We all feel it. We all know it."
You might expect those words coming from an Ontario Cabinet Minister or one of our local MPPs or even from a patient or a Trillium board member.
They sound kind of jarring coming from the mouth of Ken White, Trillium's President and CEO. It wasn't so long ago that the health care sector and hospitals in particular were the champions of circling the wagons and pretending there was no one out there whooping and hollering for their scalps.
White, the perennial leader in the annual salary disclosure sweepstakes for Peel, has emerged as the poster boy for the movement that says you can give the patient a better experience and still save loads of money by doing things right and doing things smart.A leader who isn't afraid to empower those below him, White has encouraged his administrators and doctors to take the bit in their teeth, and they've run with it. Trillium is now considered a "benchmark" (I loathe that term) hospital in delivery of many services.
The staff seem to like the place and its retention rate is phenomenal. If this all sounds too good to you to be true, join the crowd. It sounded like bumph to George Ploder too, a hard-nosed Mississauga businessman who was recruited to help the hospital raise money. When he performed his own due diligence, however, Ploder was knocked out by the clinical rankings of the hospital and its lower-than-average costs for many procedures. Ploder ended up giving the hospital a million bucks of his own. Now, that's being convinced. How long can Trillium hang onto White? Not long judging by the comments that were openly being made about his many suitors at the announcement.
Don't be surprised if he ends up implementing the same health reform agenda very soon at a lot higher level.