Just before joining HealthPRO on January 1^st of this year, I was leading the East Region of Ontario Health, a new agency that was created to achieve massive transformation in the province’s healthcare system. I was looking forward to playing a role in this mandate, helping to bring 21 agencies together and connecting care in ways that had never been done before.

By mid-February, we started getting more concerned about the “Novel Corona Virus Flu”…something that seemed distant and potentially concerning, but certainly was not an everyday obsession. 

By the third week in February, late on a Friday night, we were asked to look at some “potential scenarios and plans” to deal with a possibility of the virus hitting hard in Canada.  That weekend I got together my team of public health Chief Medical Officers, hospital CEOs and some ICU and Emergency docs to start planning for assessment centres and potential scenarios.  At this point, we heard of one or two cases in Toronto, but no deaths yet. Over the next few days, we rapidly moved from “scenarios” to real life.

In the last year, I have seen the best and worst of our system. 

All of us have seen the system, right across the country, challenged and stretched in new ways. We rose to the occasion in many areas, and bitterly disappointed ourselves in others.  We saw a system, already under strain, battle with unprecedented demand for testing, isolation, treatment and public health intervention.  The average citizen who could not even tell you what “PPE” meant, was now hearing of shortages on the evening news.  Among other things, we learned that the drugs, medical supplies, PPE and services that we take for granted every day to make the system work, were potential points of failure.

Perhaps for another day, it would be interesting to talk about the system-level insights my colleagues and I learned about. However, the one thing that definitely burned bright in my mind was that while different parts of Canada would be impacted with different intensity, we all eventually encountered many of the same issues and experiences.  Canadian healthcare is a federated system of providers, governments, professionals, associations, regulators and, most importantly, communities and patients.  We have more in common across a disparate system than we think. 

In looking at the opportunity to lead HealthPRO, I was excited by the idea of using national strength to help Canada get the best accessibility, pricing and quality of products and services for healthcare facilities across the country.  The complexity of our system makes it challenging for hospitals, clinics, and congregate care settings to be experts at everything.  Even in our biggest provinces, the volume of Canadian purchasing power is a small (but important) fraction of global demand. While Canada is a strategically important and prestigious country for many suppliers because of our relatively advanced healthcare system, it is small in “Healthcare GDP” compared to the US, the EU, and Asia.  The ability for 1,300 members to work together and allow HealthPRO to efficiently focus on the contracting side of the business provides significant value.

I am excited about taking the success of HealthPRO to a new level with our team. 

We provide a conduit for the best suppliers to serve the needs of our members.  By focusing on the complexities of public sector procurement, quality, safety, sustainability, legal, environmental, financial, adaption, innovation, and other aspects of healthcare procurement, we bring our collective purchasing power and knowledge to bear for our members.

In the first days of my role as CEO I have shared with members, suppliers and employees that HealthPRO really provides two key outputs… Knowledge and Trust.  We must be excellent at both for members and suppliers alike.  My goal is to further bolster HealthPRO’s Member Support team so we can bring more of your perspectives to suppliers.  Likewise, I want to work with our suppliers to help them efficiently bring not just product, but also innovation to our members.  Using data, relationships, and our expertise I am confident, as a national group, we can benefit all our members and suppliers from coast to coast.  

COVID-19 taught us that we rely on a global and integrated supply chain, that when stretched, challenges us all.  We need to work together in Canada to ensure our purchasing power and supplier relationships help us get the attention and service we need to serve our communities. 

I look forward to meeting many of you over the next few weeks and listening to your feedback on how we can help bring our expertise and deliver the knowledge and trust you rightly expect from us, so you can serve your patients and communities.