Leadership Development Institute (LDI)

When The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) embarked on its’ Journey to Realizing Excellence in 2009, a fundamental component was to provide its’ leaders with the knowledge and skills that are required to ensure we meet our goal of becoming one of the top 10% performers in Quality and Patient Safety within North America. TOH established the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) to provide this foundation. TOH has elevated its’ leadership development practices, by establishing three distinct LDI series: one for approximately 400 leaders with direct line reporting responsibility; one for approximately 325 of our informal leaders who have informal leadership roles and have influence amongst their colleagues; and one for approximately 70 of our Physician leaders. The LDI engage leaders in our Journey to Realizing Excellence by helping attendees connect with purpose and by linking learning with results. The sessions are an essential component to ensuring that our leaders and physicians understand their roles and responsibilities in providing excellent care. At each session a patient is invited to share their story. Through stories and letters, patients communicate directly with leaders about what matters to them and how leaders and front line care providers can make a difference. This is complemented with practical skills and tools that leaders can apply to every day practice. The curriculum is results driven and is determined by areas requiring improvement in quality, safety and satisfaction. Evaluation of the LDI series involves the collection of both quantitative and qualitative information. Quantitative information pertains to the degree of satisfaction with the presentations delivered. Qualitative information includes asking participants to identify the top 3 behaviors they are going to continue or begin and explain why as well as the top 3 behaviors/actions they are going to decrease/stop and why. In addition, we incorporate an Honest Feedback session at each LDI providing our leaders with the opportunity to ask questions of our Senior Leadership Team. With respect to some of our key corporate priorities, we have attained breakthrough performance on the % Excellent for our Overall Rating of Care. In January 2010, this result was 35.5 % Excellent and as of October 2012, we achieved 48.4 %, with a year to date result of 48.0 % Excellent. Our fiscal year 2012-2013 target was 46 % Excellent; we have surpassed this target and are seeing evidence of sustained performance. Another significant achievement is in eliminating surgical cancellations. In June 2011, nearly 70 surgeries were cancelled and from September 2011 to November 2012, we have had zero cancellations.