2025 Agenda

In this keynote, Judy Linton, Executive Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive at Ontario Health, will explore how quality standards and healthcare improvement programs are shaping the future of Canadian healthcare. With a focus on patient-centered transformation, Judy will share insights into how data-driven decision-making, when paired with compassionate leadership, can lead to meaningful and sustainable change. Drawing from Ontario Health’s experience implementing province-wide quality standards and supporting hospital-based initiatives, this session will highlight the importance of aligning clinical excellence with empathy, collaboration, and system-wide accountability. Attendees will gain practical strategies for embedding quality into everyday practice while keeping patients and families at the heart of care.

Key Takeaways:

• Explore how provincial quality standards can drive consistent, evidence-based care across settings.
• Understand the role of hospital-based quality programs in fostering continuous improvement and clinical excellence.
• Learn how integrating data and compassion can accelerate patient-centered transformation and improve outcomes.

Transforming healthcare quality requires a bold, people-centered approach. In this session, Dr. Valerie Grdisa, CEO of Canadian Nursing Association, will share how a midsize organization embedded a four-year strategic plan within a Total Quality Management framework to drive measurable improvements in care. Grounded in extensive staff and stakeholder engagement, the strategy addressed critical issues such as the opioid crisis, housing challenges, mental health and addictions service gaps, and workforce retention.

By implementing 92 targeted actions for 22 initiatives across four pillars—Quality & Reporting, Documentation & Data, Innovation & Integration, and Access & Impact—the organization achieved a 100% Accreditation Canada score, a 50% increase in base budget, and significant gains in staff and patient satisfaction. This case study demonstrates how disruptive, inclusive, and transformative planning can elevate service excellence for vulnerable populations.

Key Takeaways:  

• Strategic Transformation in Action – Learn how a midsize healthcare organization designed and executed a comprehensive, data-driven plan that aligned people, processes, and systems to achieve excellence.
• Workforce Optimization as a Quality Lever – Explore innovative approaches to recruitment, retention, and workplace culture—including blended work models, self-scheduling, digital solutions, and Just Culture—that improved staff experience and organizational performance.
• Driving Measurable Impact for Priority Populations – Understand how aligning a strategic plan with Total Quality Management enabled tangible improvements in access, quality (STEEEP = safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, person-centred), satisfaction, program growth, and health outcomes for a diverse range of populations.

Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) is currently 10 years into a journey of implementing a daily lean management system and operational excellence principles at all levels of the organization.

The lean management system, branded CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement), has been implemented in over 200 teams across six sites, including such areas as acute, pediatric, rehabilitation, ALC, clinical and administrative support.  While most of the historical focus of the CQI system has been on mobilizing frontline efforts towards solving local quality and safety problems (6000+ improvement opportunities completed), over the last few years the focus has been on enterprise-alignment of unit-based improvement efforts towards improving key corporate performance metrics.

The infrastructure and principles of the management system, building off of years of mobilizing a culture of improvement, were effectively utilized to define and drive best practices, align and advance local improvement efforts and achieve new levels of performance that HHS has never seen before in these metrics.  Over the last two years, the corporate in-hospital sepsis rate was reduced by 33% and the hand hygiene rates improved by 35%.

This session will highlight how the lean management system at HHS is structured, how a culture shift was created in improvement, enterprise alignment and leadership behaviours, and the connection to significant improvement in key corporate quality and safety outcomes.

Key Takeaways:  

• Learn how Hamilton Health Sciences implemented its CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) system across 200+ teams, embedding lean principles into both clinical and administrative areas.
• Understand how frontline engagement generated over 6,000 completed improvement opportunities and created a strong foundation for organization-wide performance change.
• Discover how HHS evolved from local problem-solving to strategic enterprise alignment—connecting unit-level improvements to corporate priorities and key metrics.
• Explore the leadership practices that fostered accountability, psychological safety, and visible support for continuous improvement.
• See how a decade of improvement infrastructure contributed to a 33% reduction in in-hospital sepsis and a 35% improvement in hand hygiene compliance across six hospital sites.

Alberta has undertaken a significant step forward in advancing healthcare quality by introducing an updated quality framework that spans seven core dimensions of care. This session will highlight how the framework has been designed, tested, and implemented across a complex provincial healthcare system to improve outcomes, enhance accountability, and strengthen patient and staff experiences.

Attendees will hear real-world insights from Alberta’s journey to create a coordinated, scalable quality strategy that bridges gaps between organizations, supports leadership decision-making, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement across a province-wide health system. The session will also explore how lessons from Alberta’s approach can inform other jurisdictions seeking to move from local, fragmented initiatives to a truly integrated system of quality care.

Key Takeaways: 

• Understanding Alberta’s Framework: Gain an overview of Alberta’s seven-dimension quality framework and how it provides a unified structure for measuring and advancing healthcare quality across diverse settings.
• Scaling System-Wide Quality: Learn strategies for achieving alignment and consistency in quality initiatives across a large, complex health system while respecting local context and needs.
• Leadership and Collaboration: Explore how leadership engagement and cross-sector collaboration have been critical in moving from isolated quality projects to a cohesive, province-wide approach that drives measurable improvements in patient outcomes and experience.

The Nursing Home Without Walls (NHWW) program facilitates access to services and resources for older adults living in the community to enhance their ability to age in place. Following a successful pilot phase, the Government of New Brunswick’s Department of Social Development committed to expanding the program across the province.

Presenters will share the lessons learned from this expansion initiative, focussing on the program’s design, establishing a measurement and evaluation framework, and institutional enablers. This session will provide a roadmap for other jurisdictions looking to enhance community-based social support systems for their aging populations.

Key Takeaways:

• Lessons in Implementation: Discover the practical strategies and challenges in scaling a new model of social service provision.
• Evaluation and Measurement for Impact: Gain insight into the development of a measurement framework to track the impact of the NHWW initiative. This includes metrics on the impact of enhanced social supports for seniors on the healthcare system.
• Institutional Enablers for Success: Learn how partnerships between government, improvement organizations, and community health providers are making this vision possible. 
• Scale and Spread: Identify opportunities to adapt and scale this model across other provinces.

Healthcare delivery depends not only on clinical expertise but on how well teams work together, communicate, and share information. Drawing on her extensive experience as a general internal medicine specialist and healthcare leader in Newfoundland and Labrador, Dr. Julia Trahey will share candid insights into the real-world challenges of implementing family care teams in a fragmented system. 

From team turnover driven by collaboration issues to the lack of standardized communication protocols and interoperable data systems, Julia highlights the barriers that often derail quality care despite good intentions and skilled professionals. This session will blend patient stories, statistics, and frontline realities to explore how health systems can strike the right balance between flexibility and structure, ensuring patients experience seamless, safe, and effective care. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Why teamwork matters: Understanding the link between poor collaboration and patient safety outcomes, including real data from Newfoundland’s family care teams. 
• The communication challenge: Lessons learned from non-standardized data sharing and fractured patient record systems during hospital-to-home transitions. 
• Balancing flexibility with structure: How to maintain adaptability in rural and diverse regions while standardizing key protocols and expectations. 
• Cultural and behavioral change: Insights on how teams and communities adapt to healthcare change, and how leadership can foster alignment and accountability. 
• Practical steps for improvement: Strategies for role clarity, standardized communication (drawing parallels to aviation safety), and building effective, resilient care teams. 

Quality improvement (QI) in healthcare is often seen as a technical exercise—but real, sustainable success depends on people. This session will explore how investing in leadership at every level, fostering authentic staff engagement, and applying data-driven feedback tools like 360 evaluations can transform organizational culture and drive measurable improvements in patient care.

Drawing from real-world results—including significant increases in engagement scores, leadership growth through structured evaluations, and stronger team-driven QI initiatives—this session highlights practical strategies to build empowered, accountable, and high-performing healthcare teams.

Key Takeaways: 

• Building Effective Teams First: Learn how tools like DISC profiles, mentorship, and structured development plans create diverse, resilient, and change-ready teams—the foundation for any successful quality improvement initiative.
• Leadership Multiplies Quality: Understand how leadership “lids” can limit or unlock organizational potential, and how developing leaders at every level accelerates quality improvement outcomes.
• Engagement Drives Results: Discover how targeted staff engagement strategies—not just surveys—improve workplace culture, retention, and patient care quality.
• Data-Driven Growth: Explore how 360-degree evaluations and transparent metrics lead to accountable leadership and sustained improvement.
• Sustainable QI is Possible: Take away practical, proven steps to create a psychologically safe environment where experimentation is encouraged, innovation is fostered, and quick wins are celebrated—making lasting improvement achievable.

The lived experiences of patients and their families are critical to improving healthcare quality, optimizing clinical outcomes, and enhancing safety protocols. There are systemic opportunities to invest into meaningful engagement with patients and families. The opportunities and challenges we need to consider are the needs of deserving groups to prevent disparities in care through structured engagement approaches that specifically seek diverse perspectives. This includes meeting people where they are, building trust and involving the community, utilizing trauma-informed engagement strategies, improving communication and safety, measuring progress, and addressing systemic barriers. These measures facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of patient needs and contribute to a more equitable healthcare system.

This presentation will highlight the experiences of settler leaders as they share their lived experience in working to build trust and collaboration within their organizations and in the communities their hospital serves.

With rising pressure on health systems in Canada, the pace of change is accelerating, including an evolving regulatory landscape, new care models, treatments, patient journeys, a growing emphasis on team-based care, and investment in primary care. Within this dynamic environment, Pharmacists are stepping up every day to meet the needs of their communities by taking on a more prominent role in primary care.

At Shoppers Drug Mart, we are supporting this evolution by implementing the infrastructure, tools, and resources needed to address growing demands across the continuum of care. We have made significant progress, including opening over 200 Pharmacy Care Clinics across Canada. More than two million patients have accessed these new spaces for care delivery, with early results demonstrating their impact and potential.

As the role of Pharmacists in primary care and supporting Canadians through transitions of care expands, continuous healthcare quality improvement becomes ever more critical. To meet this need, we developed an Enterprise Quality Framework as a pivotal first step in advancing care delivery and improving outcomes by aligning our work under a common vision. Building on this framework, we established the Patient Care and Quality Committee of the Loblaw Board of Directors to align our corporate governance and oversight with leading healthcare delivery organizations. A recent milestone in our quality journey is our inaugural Healthcare Quality Strategy, designed to focus and prioritize our work over the next three years.

Key Takeaways: 

• Pharmacists are trusted healthcare providers with extensive knowledge about medications and have a critical role in monitoring, managing, and ensuring appropriateness of drug therapy across the continuum of care.
• By building Pharmacy Care Clinics across Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart seeks to enable timely, high-quality primary care, and support patients transitioning through the continuum of care.
• Our quality improvement journey incorporates best practices from leading healthcare institutions, including a quality framework, board-level quality committee, and a three-year quality strategy.

In this session learn how Lakeridge Health, a multi-site healthcare system located in the Region of Durham in the Greater Toronto area, improved capacity and flow and became more efficient by reducing ALC volume and ALC days by over 50% in less than a year by forming community and system partnerships, making organizational changes, and implementing process improvements. Lakeridge Health (LH) was regularly hitting over 300 ALC cases accounting for almost 30% of all hospital bedded capacity and stressing all areas of the healthcare system.

With a focused approach starting in the ED and then expanding to the inpatient units, LH reduced the ALC cases to 120 (summer 2025) and still believes there is more opportunity to go lower. With this success, ED performance, hospital flow and capacity and system performance metrics across all six key dimensions of quality in healthcare: safety, effectiveness, patient-centredness, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity have all improved.