Meet Lori Brady, Sunnybrook’s new champion of community integration

Lori Brady is Sunnybrook’s inaugural Vice President of Community Integration, Partnerships and Ambulatory Care.

Her core mission? To champion the other side of Sunnybrook’s dual mandate. While most often associated with its role as a specialized hospital providing complex care for patients from across Ontario, Sunnybrook is also a community hospital for people living in North Toronto.

That is where Lori Brady comes in, with the goal of strengthening and amplifying Sunnybrook’s community connections. She brings a wealth of expertise to the job as a Registered Physiotherapist and accomplished healthcare professional with deep experience in clinical leadership, strategic planning and driving innovation in acute care, home and community care, and health system planning.

Lori Brady spoke with Sunnybrook Communications Advisor Idella Sturino to talk about what she has been up to since joining Sunnybrook’s senior leadership team in August – and her hopes for her new role.

First off, welcome to Team Sunnybrook! How are you finding things here now that you’ve had some time to settle into your new role?

I am finding it extremely warm and welcoming. Sunnybrook is a special place and I can see now why so many folks are drawn to work here or come here as a patient.

Since joining, I’ve met with team members who are interested in community integration, and shared what my new portfolio consists of. I have also been able to visit clinical areas and observe specialized procedures, to see firsthand how we are here when it matters most.

It has been a great start, and I am looking forward to what is to come as we head further into the fall.

You are the first person to fill the newly created role of VP, Community Integration, Partnerships and Ambulatory Care. What does the role encompass?

The role is intended to serve as a bridge between the hospital and its community, helping to support the transitions through integrated care.

There are three main areas of focus, the first area being primary care. We have a primary care crisis in North Toronto, given the rising population density, and reduced capacity of family doctors to meet this demand. As the population around us continues to grow, the community will be looking to Sunnybrook as its local hospital. I’ll be working with primary care stakeholders in the North Toronto Ontario Health Team to best support primary care in Sunnybrook’s catchment area. We want to ensure that North Toronto residents can readily access primary care in the community, with our Sunnybrook services sought after when absolutely necessary.

The second area of focus is home and community care. There is a provincial plan for transformation and modernization in home and community care service delivery, and we want to be better positioned to help inform future models. The question that I’ll be looking to address will be, what innovative strategies can be implemented to better transition patients from Sunnybrook back into the community?

The third area of focus for me will be ambulatory (outpatient) care. The goal will be to establish an ambulatory care strategic plan that is co-designed with input from internal and external stakeholders, to optimize care. I am here to help support and collaboratively plan what our ambulatory future looks like.

Why is it important for Sunnybrook to have a dedicated role overseeing community integration and partnerships at this point in time?

We know the government has signalled that receiving accessible care in the right place is a priority. We also know there is a push towards working across health system partners, hence the creation of Ontario Health Teams. This translates to a hyper-local goal of optimizing community-based care and connections in North Toronto. Creating this new portfolio signals that Sunnybrook has an earnest desire to collaborate with partners across our community and health system.

Hospital operations can be all-encompassing, and rightly so when dealing with high-pressured, sometimes life and death situations. With this in mind, having a role deliberately focused on the external landscape and seeking out partnerships will allow us to work better not just within our hospital walls, but outside of those walls as well.

You are a registered physiotherapist. What first drew you to the health profession?

I always knew I wanted to work in a regulated health profession. I was attracted to physiotherapy for a variety of reasons. I had had past personal encounters with physiotherapists as a patient, and was impressed by the way PTs worked over time on improvements to patient-centred rehabilitative goals. I was also attracted to the fact physiotherapists work in different settings with a variety of learning opportunities within interprofessional teams. So physio it was!

Before joining Sunnybrook, you worked in clinical leadership roles at other hospitals. You are also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. What do you find most interesting about working in healthcare leadership?

What drew me to evolve from my direct clinical role to health leadership roles was the potential to impact the health of populations. For me, that’s where it’s at. I am very interested in helping to shape health system transformation that influences on a broader scale, across large patient populations and groups.

I am also passionate about applying a health equity lens to population health management, so that there is equitable access to quality care irrespective of whatever your postal code might be. I’m excited to plan across the health system with the voices of partners, patients, and caregivers informing the outcome.

What are you looking forward to in the coming months as you continue to help Sunnybrook invent the future of healthcare?

I am looking forward to working with my fellow Sunnybrookers as well as our community partners, residents, patients, and caregivers to make inroads in those three areas I mentioned earlier: primary care, home and community care, and ambulatory care. A year from now, I would hope to see Sunnybrook and our partners better positioned as champions of cross-sectoral health system transformation. This will contribute to our dual mandate as both a specialized hospital providing complex care for the entire province, and a community hospital in North Toronto. We have an opportunity to optimize our connections with the North Toronto community, and that is what I’m here to support.