Letter from the CEO

On behalf of CorHealth, I would like to start off by acknowledging the hard work and dedication of our stakeholders during this time. Thank you for your continued efforts to support the CorHealth team in advancing quality cardiac, stroke, and vascular care for all Ontarians.

In late September and early October, we were thrilled to welcome the new members who joined the Cardiac, Stroke, and Vascular Leadership Council meetings. One key focus of these meetings was on CorHealth’s efforts to define system clinical priorities across cardiac, stroke, and vascular, as well as a performance measurement, monitoring. Members provided strategic guidance and considerations for the development of the system clinical priorities, goals, and intended outcomes for a multi-year system strategy. The Leadership Councils will be meeting again in February 2022 to finalize the priorities, goals and measurement approach.

In addition, our Clinical Advisory Committee (CAC) welcomed new members who joined the meeting in October, including new CAC Co-Chair, Lynn Guerriero, President and CEO, Niagara Health. The CAC meeting focused on COVID-19 activity reports for cardiac, stroke, and vascular care; as well as a continuation of the Leadership Council discussion on system clinical priorities. Members received an update on the development of funding policy, including cardiac funding refresh, heart failure quality-based procedures, and vascular quality-based procedures. The CAC will meet again in March 2022.

CorHealth officially kicked off the start of the Provincial Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Measurement and Reporting Initiative during the Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Stakeholder Forum, chaired by Dr. Paul Oh, on September 22, 2021. The benefit of this initiative will be to create comprehensive, consistent, and comparable Cardiovascular Rehabilitation data across time and location to inform local and provincial policy and planning.

Additionally, the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario (OAGO) Value-for-Money Audit of cardiovascular and stroke care in Ontario is in its final stages and the report, with recommendations, is anticipated to be released in December 2021. We will be sure to make the report available when it is released.

We continue work with Ontario Health (OH) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) to support the seamless and planned transfer of CorHealth into OH later this year, slated for December 1, 2021. As noted previously, OH and CorHealth are committed to ensuring that the quality and integrity of CorHealth’s initiatives will be maintained. CorHealth’s Board of Directors met on October 25, 2021 where the final details of the transfer were discussed. Stay tuned for more information on the transfer in mid November.

It is with mixed emotions that we said good-bye to Graham Woodward, SVP, from CorHealth. Graham had been with CorHealth for just over 6 years and during that time, he provided leadership and strategic guidance to policy planning, performance, and quality improvement for cardiac, stroke, and vascular care in Ontario. Looking forward, we wish Graham the very best in his new role as Vice President of the Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence at OH.

In this issue, the following-work related updates are highlighted:

We will share further updates through Bulletins as required, but, in the meantime, please contact me if you’d like to discuss these updates further.

Ms. Sheila Jarvis,

Chief Executive Officer, CorHealth Ontario