Session Information
Morning Plenary
The State of Safety: How Do We Accelerate?
- Presented by
- Tejal Gandhi, Chief Safety and Transformation Officer at Press Ganey, Qualtrics
Description:
In this session, Dr. Gandhi will assess patient safety trends across the country, highlighting data that demonstrates opportunities for improvement. She will discuss specific, innovative strategies to accelerate progress, including expanding the definition of harm to capture psychological, emotional, financial, and physical harm and strengthening safety culture and workforce engagement. She will also describe the strong connection between patient safety and patient experience.
Morning Concurrent Sessions
Sharing Safety Learnings Across TAHSN Organizations and Beyond (Workshop)
- Presented by:
- Genny Ng, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
- Laura Pozzobon, Women's College Hospital
- Stephanie Robinson, University Health Network
- Shadan Fallahi, Sinai Health System
Description:
This workshop continues the work of the TAHSN QIPS Community of Practice Patient Safety Workstream in developing a common approach to identifying, analyzing, and learning from serious safety events. Patient safety teams regularly conduct reviews, identify deviations from generally accepted performance standards, and generate recommendations to improve care. Too often, these insights remain within individual institutions. This session will explore how organizations can start to break down siloes, share learnings and avoid reinventing solutions to common problems. Through small and large group discussions, participants will exchange experiences and explore practical ways to learn from one another across organizations, with the ultimate goal of improving patient safety.
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Collaborative Change Leadership for Quality Improvement in Complex Clinical Environments (Workshop)
- Presented by:
- Kathryn Parker, Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE)
- Maria Tassone, Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE)
Description:
Quality improvement in clinical settings often requires engagement of busy clinicians who have numerous competing priorities. Collaborative change leadership is an approach that helps leaders move improvement work forward by building strong relationships, focusing on what is working well, adapting as circumstances change, and drawing on greater self-awareness to lead more effectively. This hands-on, interactive workshop introduces these ideas and shows how they can strengthen the way QI teams work together and with others. Attendees will leave with practical approaches they can apply to lead change more effectively in their own settings.
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Hot Topics in Quality Improvement and Safety (Panel)
- Moderated by:
- Christine Soong, Sinai Health Network
- Brian Wong, Sunnybrook HSC, CQuIPS
Description:
A long-standing favourite of the CQuIPS symposium, this session features two QIPS experts who have selected a curated set of published papers that stand out for their impact, innovation, and relevance. Featured publications include those with groundbreaking findings, novel methodologies, or important implications for practice. The presenters will summarize each article and discuss why it was selected, offering attendees a concise and thoughtful overview of key developments shaping the field.
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Abstract Presentations: Showcasing Innovative Research in Healthcare Improvement
- Moderated by:
- Upasana Panda, CQuIPS
- Leahora Rotteau, CQuIPS
Description:
This session will consist of oral abstract presentations with a focus on research in healthcare improvement. The presenters will be selected from the poster submissions with the aim of having a variety of healthcare improvement topics, theories and methodologies represented. Abstract presenters will provide a summary of their work including reflections on key lessons learned and implications, with time for participant group interaction and discussions.
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Leveraging QI to Address Primary Care Attachment (Workshop)
- Presented by:
- Noor Ramji, Unity Health Toronto
- Amanda Mayo, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, CQuIPS
Description:
Ontario has made a clear commitment to ensuring that every resident is attached to a primary care provider, recognizing attachment as a foundational element of a high-functioning health system. Achieving this goal, however, requires practical strategies and sustained improvement efforts across diverse settings. This hands-on workshop will explore how quality improvement tools and methods can be applied to strengthen primary care attachment. Facilitators will share real-world examples of QI approaches that have been used to advance this priority, illustrating both what has worked and the challenges encountered along the way. Attendees will adopt new strategies to advance attachment efforts in their own primary care settings.
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Beyond the Score: Making PROMs Work in QI (Panel)
- Moderated by:
- Olivia Ostrow, Sickkids, CQuIPS
- Presented by:
- Katie Sheehan, University Health Network
- Soumia Meiyappan, Women's College Hospital
- Sonal Gandhi, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, CQuIPS
Description:
This session takes a practical look at how patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are being used to inform quality improvement in real-world healthcare settings. Once largely a research tool, PROMs are now embedded in routine care across areas such as oncology, surgery, mental health, and chronic disease management—generating data with the potential to transform how organizations understand and improve the care they deliver. Panelists will share how their organizations are collecting PROMs at scale, the challenges of integrating them into clinical workflows, and the strategies they have used to translate PROMs data into action. Discussion will focus on where PROMs hold the greatest promise and what it takes to make them genuinely useful for improvement and safety work.
Afternoon Concurrent Sessions
From Capture to Change: Equity Data in Health Care (Panel)
- Moderated by:
- Bourne Auguste, Sunnybrooke Health Sciences Centre, CQuIPS
- Presented by:
- Tara Burra, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CQuIPS
- Allison Needham, Unity Health Toronto
- Sara Wolfe, Equity Cubed, Fractional Services for Impact Enterprises
Description:
Healthcare organizations are increasingly committed to advancing equity in the care they provide, and high-quality equity data is foundational to this work. Yet the journey from collecting equity data to acting on it is complex, and organizations across the field find themselves at very different stages along the way. This panel presentation will bring together leaders with a range of perspectives, sharing real-world examples that span the full arc from data capture to system change. Panelists will discuss the practical strategies needed to collect equity data consistently, completely, and in ways that honour data sovereignty, as well as how organizations are putting that data to meaningful use—drawing insights that shape and refine their approach to improvement and safety work.
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Oral Abstracts: QI Projects
- Moderated by:
- Beth Gamulka, Sickkids, CQuIPS
- Chandra Farrer, Women's College Hospital, CQuIPS
Description:
This session will consist of a select number of oral abstract presentations featuring both QIPS projects and QIPS research. The presenters will be selected from the poster submissions with the aim of having a variety of healthcare improvement topics, theories and methodologies represented. Abstract presenters will provide a summary of their work including reflections on key lessons learned and implications, with time for participant group interaction and discussions.
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Choosing Wisely and Treading Lightly: A QI Workshop to Drive Down Low-Value Care (Workshop)
- Presented by:
- Tom Bodley, Scarborough Health Network
- Karen Born, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
- Katrina Piggott, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
Description:
Reducing low-value care is a critical imperative—better for patients, better for our systems, and better for the planet. This hands-on workshop will focus on the practical application of quality improvement approaches to de-implement unnecessary tests, treatments, and practices, with examples drawn from Choosing Wisely initiatives. Facilitators will share strategies that have been used to drive sustained change, highlighting both successes and challenges along the way. The session will also explore environmental sustainability as a co-benefit—an increasingly important consideration as healthcare systems work to reduce their footprint. Through small group discussions and interactive exercises, participants will leave with concrete approaches they can apply in their own settings.
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Better Together: Partnerships Between Scientists and Quality Improvement Teams (Panel)
- Presented by:
- Katie Dainty, North York General Hospital
- Joanne Goldman, CQuIPS
- Lianne Jeffs, Sinai Health Network
- Lauren Lapointe-Shaw, University Health Network
Description:
When researchers and those leading care delivery and quality improvement work alongside one another, the result can be more than the sum of its parts—each brings distinct perspectives, strengths, and ways of approaching problems that, when combined thoughtfully, can drive more rigorous and impactful improvement work. Through discussion of real-world examples, this session will explore what it takes to make these partnerships succeed—what has worked well, the challenges that have surfaced, and the organizational enablers that foster meaningful collaboration. Attendees will leave with a greater appreciation for how such partnerships might benefit their own work and strengthen quality improvement within their organizations.
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Learning Together to Work Together: A Co-Learning Approach to Patient-Engaged Quality Improvement (Workshop)
- Presented by:
- Emeralda Burke, Unity Health Toronto
- Christie Lockhart, Michael Garron Hospital, CQuIPS
- Laura Oxenham-Murphy, Michael Garron Hospital
- Razia Rashed, Michael Garron Hospital
- Melissa Sheldrick, Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada
Description:
Meaningful partnership with patients is increasingly recognized as essential to quality improvement work, yet bringing patient partners into improvement teams is rarely straightforward. Patient partners may be unfamiliar with QI methodology and the practical realities of how improvement work unfolds, while teams often lack the experience and skills needed to engage patient partners in genuinely meaningful ways. This interactive session takes a co-learning approach, bringing providers and patient partners together to learn from and with one another. Through reflective discussion and shared exercises, participants will explore practical strategies for preparing both patients and teams to engage in authentic, co-produced improvement work.
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Use of Large Language Models to Accelerate Safety and Patient Experience Analytics (Panel)
- Presented by:
- Adina Weinerman, Sunnybrook Health Sciences, CQuIPS
- Cathy O'Neill, Unity Health Network
Description:
Healthcare organizations collect vast amounts of safety and patient experience data, much of it in the form of unstructured text that is difficult to learn from at scale. Large language models offer new ways to surface insights from this data, and teams across the field are beginning to put these tools to work. This panel presentation will showcase practical applications of LLMs to analyze incident reports, patient feedback, and other narrative data sources related to quality of care delivery. Panelists will share early wins and cautionary lessons from their work, offering an honest look at what is working, what is not, and where the most promising opportunities lie.
Afternoon Plenary
SQUIRE 2026: What's New, What's Changed, and Why It Matters
- Presented by:
- Leahora Rotteau, CQuIPS, SQUIRE
- Kaveh Shojania, CQuIPS, SQUIRE