New OMA President: Let's Create the Health-Care System of the Future

TORONTO, April 27, 2014 /CNW/ - Dr. Ved Tandan envisions a health system that breaks down the walls between hospitals, doctors' offices and the community – where care is truly centered around the patient, and teams of providers come together to deliver seamless, highly coordinated care to patients wherever they are, whenever they need it.

As the new president of the Ontario Medical Association, Dr. Tandan pledged today that he will work toward this future by beginning to dismantle the walls that block the system from being the best it can be.

"The system isn't broken, but it can be so much better," said Dr. Tandan, a Hamilton General Surgeon who focuses on liver and pancreatic cancers. "We need to reinvent the way we deliver care in Ontario. If we are open to change, and adapt to new tools, technologies, and models of care, we can truly build the health-care system of the future." 

Dr. Tandan will devote his year as OMA president to creating partnerships between physicians and healthcare institutions such as hospitals that will allow these changes to occur and flourish.

He cited the province's Health Links program as one exciting model for the future of healthcare. Currently, dozens of Health Links are being established across the province to bring caregivers such as doctors, nurses and physiotherapists together around some of our most complicated individual patients, each of whom has a treatment plan. Care is centred on the person: far from stopping at the hospital door, treatment flows to patients wherever they are. Ontario's doctors are helping to lead the rollout of Health Links, and are encouraged by its promise.

"We want to continue building on that model and others like it," said Dr. Tandan. "The future I want for Ontario health care – frankly, for health care everywhere – is one in which the walls and the silos that limit us are replaced by strong partnerships. We won't get there in a year. But we will get closer. And we will get there."

SOURCE: Ontario Medical Association

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