Janet Davidson, KPMG in Canada 

Hello, I’m Janet Davidson. I’m one of the global experts in the Center of Excellence. I’m located in Canada, but I do a lot of work around the world. I’ve got a very broad background in health care, both from that of a frontline nurse, all the way to the executive suite, both in running big academic hospitals as well as community hospitals, in working with governments and actually being in government, working with voluntary organizations both domestically and internationally. So I bring a wide range of knowledge and experience in pretty much all areas of healthcare. And so I would like to be able to work with you and help you identify what you think are the important issues and challenges that you want to try and deal with, and explore ways in which I can help you deal with those.

I think the value add that I really bring to the Global Healthcare Practice is, first of all, my frontline knowledge of how hospitals, and how systems actually operate. So looking at improvement within the operations of organizations is an area that I’m very good at. I’ve also sat on a lot of boards. I’ve worked with boards, so I have a good knowledge and experience in governance and board grip. And probably the other one would be, because I’ve run big hospital systems, is the whole drive to quality, and how you drive improved quality of care, and improved quality of working life. And for most of my career I’ve been really strongly dedicated to the fact that if you’re gonna improve quality, you have to improve it through your people. So how do you create a good working environment that actually encourages and supports your people to provide the quality of care, which of course we’re all interested in doing.

I’ve had experience in something that could help people identify what exactly is it you want to do here. Do you want to improve the length of stay, for example, in a hospital? Do you want to improve the costs? Do you want to increase the value? Do you want to improve the way the board oversees an organization? Do you want to help government develop policies that improve health? I mean, I’ve had experience in all of those areas, but I think from my point of view, it’s often good to have an initial discussion.