University Health Network | |
---|---|
Geography | |
Location | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Organization | |
Care system | Medicare |
Type | Teaching, research |
Affiliated university | University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine |
Services | |
Standards | Tertiary care |
Beds | 1286 |
History | |
Opened | 1986 [1] |
Links | |
Website | www |
University Health Network (UHN) is a public research and teaching hospital network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is the largest health research organization in Canada, ranking first in Canada for total research funding.
The network includes four hospitals – Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre – West Park Healthcare Centre, the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, and The Michener Institute, a post-secondary institution granting diplomas and certificates in health sciences and leadership. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year, there were more than 39,000 acute inpatient stays and close to 121,000 emergency department visits across the three acute care hospitals. [2]
Newsweek has consistently named UHN's Toronto General Hospital as among the world's top hospitals, most recently ranking Toronto General as the world's 3rd best hospital in 2024, and first in Canada. [3] The hospital was named Canada's top research hospital by Research Infosource from 2015 to 2022. [4] [5]
A series of mergers over many years has resulted in the UHN in its current form. In 1986, the Toronto Western Hospital and the Toronto General Hospital merged to form the Toronto Hospital. In 1998, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre joined, with the resulting institution named the University Health Network in 1999. The Toronto Rehabilitation Institute joined in 2011, facilitating rehabilitation services for patients as they transitioned out of acute care. All four hospitals are affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto and serve as teaching hospitals for resident physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professions. 2016 saw the integration of The Michener Institute into the UHN. The Michener Institute for Education was originally established in 1958 and is the first non-medical unit to join the UHN. On April 1, 2024, West Park Healthcare Centre joined the UHN. [6]
UHN and Sinai Health System jointly run the SHS-UHN Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, advocating for improved patient access to appropriate antibiotics while combating antimicrobial resistance. [7] The program is led by infectious diseases specialist Andrew Morris, [8] who joined as founding director at its inception in 2009. [9]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, UHN received a $323,981 grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada's Immunization Partnership Fund to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake among personal support workers and their patients. [10]
Healthcare in Canada is delivered through the provincial and territorial systems of publicly funded health care, informally called Medicare. It is guided by the provisions of the Canada Health Act of 1984, and is universal. The 2002 Royal Commission, known as the Romanow Report, revealed that Canadians consider universal access to publicly funded health services as a "fundamental value that ensures national health care insurance for everyone wherever they live in the country".
Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) is a hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mount Sinai is part of Sinai Health. Sinai Health was formed through the voluntary amalgamation of Mount Sinai Hospital and Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital on January 22, 2015.
Markham Stouffville Hospital is an acute care community hospital with two sites: the Markham site, with diagnostic and emergency services, and clinical programs in childbirth, children's health, surgery, medicine, cancer care and mental health; and the Uxbridge site, a 20-bed hospital offering some inpatient and emergency services. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year there were almost 20,000 inpatient stays with an average length of stay of 4.6 days, and 106,000 emergency department visits.
The Toronto General Hospital (TGH) is a major teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the flagship campus of University Health Network (UHN). It is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto along University Avenue's Hospital Row; it is directly north of The Hospital for Sick Children, across Gerrard Street West, and east of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. In 2019, the hospital was ranked first for research in Canada by Research Infosource for the ninth consecutive year.
North York General Hospital (NYGH) is a teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Primarily serving the North York district, as well as southern York Region, it offers acute care, ambulatory and long-term services at multiple sites. It is one of Canada's leading community academic hospitals and is affiliated with the University of Toronto. NYGH is one of the three constituent hospitals of the Peters-Boyd Academy of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute is the largest rehabilitation hospital in Canada. Owned and operated by the University Health Network (UHN), Toronto Rehab provides patients with rehabilitation care, helping people rebuild their lives and achieve individualized goals following injury and disability. It is composed of five sites across Toronto, which are: Bickle Centre, Lakeside Centre, Lyndhurst Centre, Rumsey Centre, and University Centre.
The Michener Institute of Education at UHN, or simply Michener, is a specialist post-secondary institution in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Based in Downtown Toronto and governed by the University Health Network (UHN), Canada's largest funded health care organization, Michener was founded by Diana Michener Schatz as the Toronto Institute of Medical Technology in 1958 with a pilot program in Medical Laboratory Technology at the Toronto General Hospital. After years of expansion through more programs offered, the institute was relocated to its present campus in 1972 at 222 St. Patrick Street and was renamed "The Michener Institute" after Schatz's father, Roland Michener in 1990. The institute is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health.
Humber River Hospital is a major acute care hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located in the northwest part of Toronto, near Highway 401 and Keele Street. It is a large community hospital offering emergency and intensive care services, maternal and child services along with other services such as cardiology, orthopaedic surgery and cancer care. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year there were nearly 30,000 inpatient stays with an average length of stay of 7.0 days, and 135,000 emergency department visits.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides essential information on Canada's health systems and the health of Canadians. CIHI provides comparable and actionable data and information that are used to accelerate improvements in health care, health system performance and population health across Canada.
British Columbia Children's Hospital is a medical facility located in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority. It specializes in health care for patients from birth to 16 years of age. It is also a teaching and research facility for children's medicine. The hospital includes the Sunny Hill Health Centre, which provides specialized services to children and youth with developmental disabilities aged birth to 16 years.
The Hamilton General Hospital (HGH) is a major teaching hospital in Downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, located at the intersection of Barton Street East and Victoria Avenue North. It is operated by Hamilton Health Sciences and is formally affiliated with the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. HGH is Canada's largest hospital by bed count.
Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) is a hospital network of seven hospitals and a cancer centre serving Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In 2018 it was ranked 3rd in Canada on Research Infosource's Top 40 Hospitals in Canada list.
The Canadian Stroke Network (CSN) is a non-profit healthcare organization.
Saint Boniface Hospital is Manitoba's second-largest hospital, located in the St. Boniface neighbourhood of Winnipeg. Founded by the Sisters of Charity of Montreal in 1871, it was the first hospital in Western Canada. The hospital was incorporated in 1960, and as of 2020 has 436 beds and 30 bassinets.
Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) refers to coordinated efforts to promote the optimal use of antimicrobial agents, including drug choice, dosing, route, and duration of administration. AMS has been an organized effort of specialists in infectious diseases, both in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics with their respective peer-organizations, hospital pharmacists, the public health community and their professional organizations since the late 1990s.
The Sinai Health System is a hospital system which serves Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It comprises two hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital, both affiliated with the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.
Unity Health Toronto is a Catholic hospital network serving Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was initially founded in 2017 under the provisional name Our Shared Purpose through the merger of St. Michael's Hospital, Providence Healthcare and St. Joseph's Health Centre. It is the largest Catholic health care network in Canada. All three facilities in the network are members of the Catholic Health Sponsors of Ontario and the CHSO is responsible for ensuring consistency with the founding principles of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Tim Rutledge is the CEO.
Allison Joan McGeer is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and is a partner of the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. McGeer has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air and has served on several provincial committees advising aspects of the Government of Ontario's pandemic response.
Inner City Health Associates (ICHA) is Canada's largest community healthcare organization for unhoused people and is based in Toronto.
There has been a nursing shortage in Canada for decades. This became more acute in the period between 1943 and 1952 as Canada's health services were expanding, and the number of hospital beds increased along with the number of hospitalizations. By the mid-1940s across Canada the shortage, estimated at 8,700, led to a re-organization and re-conceptualization of nursing in Canada, according to a 2020 journal article in BC Studies. The nature of nursing was changing with new and time-consuming responsibilities, such as the administration of penicillin. During that period, there was no unemployment for nurses, especially if they were willing to be mobile. However, working conditions for nurses were very poor, with low wages combined with long hours; nursing force retention was challenging. As well, since almost all nurses were women, they had responsibilities at home they had to manage. In response to the shortage of nurses, women who had trained as registered nurses (RNs) but had left the workforce when they married, were encouraged to return to work; volunteers were engaged; nursing courses were accelerated; and new categories of regulated nursing were added to registered nursing—"practical nurses" and "nursing assistants." At that time, a "utopia of nursing" referred to teams of nursing staff which included registered nurses and other regulated nursing and hospital worker support personnel. Some of these auxiliary positions were also open to First Nations women and other racialized groups.