Please see below for the following updates:

• Appointment of Professor Lisa Robinson as Dean, Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Vice-Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions
• Impact of Shortened 3 Month Claim Submission Timeframe on Risk of Rejection due to "Stale Dated" Claims
• Important Announcement: Changes to Fellowship Remuneration Effective January 1, 2025
• Holiday Closures - UofT/CPSO/CMPA
• Announcement: Addictions Clinical Team Lead
• Help shape the next iteration of CanMEDS
• Welcome Trixie Williams as the new Vice President, Clinical, Rehabilitation and Transitions
• Announcement from Thomas G. Parker MD, FRCPC, FACC Executive Vice President, Clinical and Chief Medical Officer: Dr. Carolyn Snider has completed her term as Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Michael’s
• Highlights from Project Connect Leadership Event

 Please see the attached announcement from the Provost.

I am Delighted to announce that the Agenda Committee of Academic Board has approved the appointment of Professor Lisa Robinson as Dean of Temerty Faculty of Medicine for a five-year term from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2029, after an extensive international search. The Executive Committee of Governing Council also approved her appointment as Vice-Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions for the same term.

 

Dear SMPA Members,

With the reduction in the time frame from 6 months to 3 months prior to OHIP claims becoming "stale dated" (i.e. not paid by OHIP) effective since April 1, 2023, it has become more important to have your claims and billing cards submitted to the billing office in a timely manner.  This is particularly important for errors and rejections which can sometimes take one or even two monthly billing cycles to get identified, corrected, and resubmitted.  When we had 6 months prior to claims becoming stale dated, this gave us much more time to re-submit errors and rejections, however, with only 3 months the time frame for resubmissions has considerably shortened.

We would strongly encourage you to submit your claims and billing cards within a week of the date of service.  Although the billing office makes every effort to submit billing cards they receive in a timely manner, if your claims and billing cards are submitted more than a month or two after the date of service there is a significant risk that some of your claims may not be paid, particularly if there are errors or rejections requiring re-submission.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Best regards,

Jessie

Hai Qing (Jessie) Zhao CPA

Business Manager

SMPA Admin Agent Inc.

204-55 Queen Street East

Toronto, Ontario M5C 1R6

T: 416 366 6139X204

F: 416 366 7419

 

 

Dear Colleagues, 

On behalf of the Fellowship Education Advisory Committee (FEAC) I am writing to inform you of changes to the fellowship remuneration structure at the University of Toronto, effective January 1, 2025. These changes are part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing the fellowship experience and ensuring transparency, consistency, and equity across all programs.

Background:

In alignment with our strategic goals, clinical fellows' remuneration will undergo an adjustment. The minimum compensation will be at the PGY3 level. This decision reflects a re-evaluation of the 2011 FEAC recommendation, which anchored the recommended minimum fellow salaries to the PGY1 level. The adjustment aims to address evolving roles, responsibilities, and living costs in Toronto.

Summary of Changes:

1. Minimum Salary Adjustment: The minimum salary for clinical fellows will now reflect the shift to a PGY3 level, ensuring fair compensation.

2. Review Process for Part-Time Contracts: All part-time contracts will undergo a review process, requiring approval from the Vice Chair, Education, or their delegate. As a part of this review, it's essential to provide a rationale for the part-time arrangement, attached is a templated letter designed for Vice Chairs to approve all part-time fellowships.

For details on the rationale for the new salary baseline mandate, please see the attached Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendations (SBAR) document.

To assist programs in understanding and implementing these changes, we have prepared a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document, which aims to address common queries to provide clarity on the upcoming expectations.

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding during this transition. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to Veronica Marrone, Project Manager, Fellowships, at [email protected]. 

Thank you for your continued dedication to fostering excellence in our fellowship programs.

Best regards,

John

John Granton MD FRCPC

Consultant, Pulmonary Hypertension and Critical Care

Medical Director, Health Services UHN

Faculty Lead, Fellowships, Temerty Medicine

Professor of Medicine

Faculty of Medicine

University of Toronto

 

 

Please see the upcoming holiday closures:

1. University of Toronto will close at 5:00 pm Wednesday, December 20^th and will reopen at 8:45 am on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. PGME will also be closed during this time with a small team working virtually to facilitate registration for learners who start between January 1 and 3, 2024. Please direct all PGME registration inquiries to [email protected] during the holiday closure.

2. CPSO will close at 5:00 pm Thursday, December 21, 2023 and will reopen at 8:00 am Tuesday, January 2, 2024. We have reminded postgraduate learners that if they have an upcoming change to their CPSO licensure (i.e., status change, return from leave, etc.), to log in to their CPSO member portal to ensure all is in order.  No new or renewals of licensure will be processed by CPSO during their closure.

3. CMPA will be closed as of end of business day on December 24^th and will reopen on Tuesday, January 2, 2024. Membership is renewed annually throughout the month of December; we have asked postgraduate learners to please sign in to their account to ensure their protection is continuous. And reminded our learners who may have a new application in process, that processing takes up to 10 business days. See also: CMPA Contact Us.

Please encourage learners to plan appropriately as CPSO licenses and CMPA protection will not be issued during their respective closures.

The Office of Learner Affairs (OLA) will be messaging all learners about supports that can be accessed over the closure.  A reminder, while OLA is not an emergency service, there are several resources learners can access at any time https://meded.temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/crisis-resources.

Wishing you a safe and happy holiday season.

Sincerely,

MEREDITH GIULIANI (She/Her/Hers) MBBS, MEd, PhD, FRCPC, DRCPSC                                                         

Associate Dean, Postgraduate Medical Education

Associate Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology

Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

 

I’m very excited to announce that Dr. Kit Fairgrieve was the successful applicant for the Addictions Clinical Team Lead position. I look forward to working with him in building our addictions service. This will complement the work he’s already doing in the Addictions Education Coordinator role.

Kit is a family physician from Toronto.  Following residency in family medicine at McMaster University (rural Collingwood site), Kit completed clinical and research fellowships in addiction medicine at the University of British Columbia.  He has worked primarily in inpatient addiction consult settings, including St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver prior to his work at St. Michael’s Hospital.

Kit will be the point-person at SMH for overseeing physician services in our RAAM clinic and the inpatient consultation service. He’ll support me and Dr. Anita Srivastava, our UHT Addictions Medical Director, and Samantha Boumeester, our CLM, by providing guidance for clinical services and program development. Please feel free to connect with Kit, as the local physician lead, if there are any questions, issues or ideas you have regarding our current addictions services or emerging needs.

Please share this announcement with your teams. I’m excited to work with Kit in this new role and the support he can provide more widely at our hospital.

Best,

Karen

Karen Shin, MD, FRCPC

Psychiatrist-in-Chief, St. Michael’s Hospital

Mental Health and Addictions Service

Unity Health – St. Michael's Hospital

17^th Floor – 30 Bond St. Toronto, ON M5B 1W8

(P) 416-864-6010 (F) 416-864-5480

[email protected]

 

 

Dear colleagues,

As many of you may know through your involvement and contributions, CanMEDS, the physician competency framework that shapes physician education and the evolution of competence, is undergoing a review. Together with the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC), the Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ) and the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), it is our goal to have the next iteration ready for approval in late 2025, or early 2026.

To solicit meaningful feedback, as well as both member and public engagement in the development of this next iteration, the CanMEDS project has planned several Open Calls. The first CanMEDS Open Call was launched in October, and we've received a significant number of responses to date. I’d like to thank everyone for their input.

On November 23, a draft document from the CanMEDS Anti-Racism Expert Working Group that was shared on X (formerly Twitter) generated discussion and subsequent media attention about equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the new model. Some of the online discussions seemed to suggest that the ideas expressed in these supporting documents were the proposed adaptations by the four partner organizations; rather, the documents were made available to solicit input and varied perspectives into evolving the future framework.

Dialogue and feedback are both critical to the evolution of the CanMEDS Framework, including the comments that we are receiving through the Open Call. National consultations will continue to take place throughout this project and a draft framework will also be shared widely for feedback in 2025.

How CanMEDS links to our overall Strategic Plan

Updates to the CanMEDS Framework closely align with the Royal College’s overall Strategic Plan, which, following extensive member consultations, identified three complex societal issues that are impacting the care specialist physicians deliver:

• health human resources and workforce well-being,
• Indigenous health, anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion, and
• planetary health and sustainable health care.

These issues need to be addressed collectively by our membership, and as such, we have integrated these as themes into each of our core areas of activity so we can begin to address the learning challenges and programming requirements inherent in each.

I would like to invite you to read the public statement we released in response to the recent discussions. This statement outlines how the CanMEDS Framework is being updated.

We want to keep the dialogue open. If you have feedback that will help guide the next phase of this work, please submit your responses to the CanMEDS Open Call by December 31, 2023.

Share your feed back

Thank you and take care,

Ian

M. Ian Bowmer, MDCM, FRCPC, FRCP, FCAHS, FACP(hon), FRCPI(hon)

Chief Executive Officer (interim) / Directeur général (intérimaire)

Royal College/ Collège royal

Royal College International / Collège royal international

 

 

After an extensive recruitment process, I am pleased to announce that Trixie Williams will be the Vice President, Clinical, Rehabilitation and Transitions, effective February 20, 2024.

Trixie will join Unity Health from Scarborough Health Network (SHN) where she is currently the Associate Vice President, Clinical Programs. As a registered nurse with 25 years of experience in healthcare, Trixie is a passionate leader with many accomplishments. This includes the management of major hospital programs such as Cardiovascular and Stroke, Medicine, Seniors Strategy, Oncology and Palliative Care.

In her time at SHN, Trixie has led various projects including the coordination of essential COVID-19 initiatives, the opening of the inaugural integrated Stroke Unit and the implementation of the regional Clinical Information System project. This work led to maximizing capacity and increasing access to care for patients at SHN. Trixie previously held leadership positions with Ontario Health (OH), as Regional Lead helping to implement the Vascular and Stroke System design. At OH, she led the team in important regional initiatives such as diabetes care, cardiac care and stroke services. Before her time with Ontario Health, Trixie was the Program Manager of Diabetes Care, Renal, Transplantation, Endocrinology and Ophthalmology at Unity Health’s St. Michael’s site. In this role, she helped support in the regional renal network while working to improve access and flow and quality patient care.

Trixie is also a Faculty Advisor for the Practical Nursing Program at George Brown College, where she developed best practice curricula based on learnings from the pandemic.

With a deep knowledge in stakeholder engagement, skills in quality improvement and risk management, and passion for education, Trixie’s leadership will continue to elevate and integrate Providence’s clinical programs. Trixie’s expertise will strengthen the excellence in the delivery of care, education and research that has been established across Unity Health. Please join me in welcoming Trixie to the Unity Health team in February. 

Dr. Carolyn Snider will complete her term as Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Michael’s as of Dec. 31, 2023. Stepping down from this position, she will resume full time clinical and academic activities. I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her many important contributions to both the Department and the hospital. Carolyn superbly led the Department during the unprecedented challenge of the COVID pandemic, and was a key leader in the hospital’s response to both the pandemic and the subsequent pressures on patient volumes and flow through the ED. In addition, aligned with her own area of academic excellence, Carolyn has worked tirelessly with patients and community colleagues to research and redesign how emergency department care can be delivered in an equitable way for those experiencing marginalization and inequity. We all wish her every success as she continues to focus on this important work.

As we embark upon the process of looking for a new Chief, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Steve Lin as Interim Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine, effective Jan. 1, 2024 until a permanent replacement is in place. Steve is an emergency physician, trauma team leader, and scientist in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital. He is an Associate Professor and clinician-scientist in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine with appointments at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto. We are grateful that he has agreed to serve the Department in this capacity. I am sure that Steve will have everyone’s full support in this position.

An external review of the Department will be undertaken in early 2024 followed by a comprehensive search for the next permanent Chief of the Department at St. Michael’s.

Thank you for attending the leadership event I Wish I Knew – A Conversation About Implementing an EPR System, hosted by the Project Connect team. The event brought together our peers from

University Health Network, Trillium Health Partners, Women’s College Hospital, and Mackenzie Health, who were candid and open in sharing their experiences on implementing Epic at their organizations.

We have enclosed a summary of key takeaways, links to presentations, and the recordings of the plenary and the breakout sessions for your use. We hope you found this time spent valuable as we continue to move forward in our own implementation. Please share your lessons and insights from the sessions with your team.

Thank you again for your support,

The Project Connect Team