Lucas Chartier and Olivia Ostrow

Date and time:

Tuesday, December 12, 2023, 12-1 

Session Description:

The Return Visit Quality Program is a mandatory audit program for Ontario’s largest emergency departments (EDs). It aims to build a culture of quality through the routine audit of cases of patients who were discharged from the ED and then returned within 72hrs requiring hospitalization in order to uncover potential adverse events and/or quality issues. Since 2016, this program has led to thousands of audits and hundreds of quality improvement projects throughout the province. As co-leads of the program, the presenters will review the infrastructure of the program along with the enablers and challenges for developing a community of practice over time.

Speaker bios:

Lucas Chartier is a healthcare leader and innovator driven by the pursuit of better quality and safer patient care for all. He serves as Vice President, Quality & Safety and Chief Patient Safety Officer at the University Health Network (UHN), where he also works as an emergency physician. Lucas is the Lead for Emergency Medicine for Ontario Health Toronto and past co-Chair of the Return Visit Quality Program of Ontario Health Quality. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. With training at McGill (MD CM), University of Toronto (FRCPC), Harvard (MPH) and the Rotman School of Management (MBA), his work primarily focuses ensuring that the operational and clinical aspects of healthcare align to enable providers to deliver value for patients. 

Olivia Ostrow is an Academic Clinician and the Director for Quality and Safety for the Division of Paediatric Emergency Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. She is a Medical Safety Leader at SickKids and the Associate Director for the hospital’s Choosing Wisely campaign. Since 2020, Dr. Ostrow has been the Associate Director at the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) at the University of Toronto. She is also the Pediatrics lead for Choosing Wisely Canada and co-chairs the provincial Emergency Department Return Visit Quality Program with Ontario Health. Dr. Ostrow is passionate about healthcare quality and safety and is actively involved in front-line improvement work.