Dr. Ben Chan is Assistant Professor of Global Health at the University of Toronto and a leading figure in Canada on strategy and leadership for healthcare quality. Dr. Chan was the inaugural CEO of the Health Quality Councils of Saskatchewan (2003-2007) and Ontario (2007-2012). In recognition of his work in spearheading improvement initiatives in chronic disease management, patient safety and public reporting on quality, Dr. Chan was named in 2006 Canada’s Outstanding Young Health Executive.
Dr. Chan is a consultant at the World Bank and has worked in over with the WHO and foreign governments in 25 countries spanning 5 continents. He advised on the national quality strategies for Georgia, Uzbekistan & Kyrgyzstan and led or supported quality improvement projects on hypertension, diabetes and childhood growth in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and several Caribbean states. He is currently developing for the World Bank a tool to assess quality improvement capacity at a national level to identify priorities for investment.
Dr. Chan is also an experienced primary care and emergency department physician and has worked in over seventy rural communities across Canada. He was also the former physician for a remote First Nations community in Northwest Ontario where he helped establish opioid addiction treatment services. He holds a BSc and MD (Toronto), Master of Public Health (Harvard) and Master of Public Affairs (Princeton).
One would think that quality improvement is easy to do in big budget teaching hospitals with quality departments and sophisticated IT systems. But can you do it if you are in a small, isolated setting with limited resources, serving a vulnerable population? Of course you can! Dr. Chan shares his decades of experience as a front-line rural physician, former CEO of Health Quality Ontario, and now consultant with the World Bank supporting quality initiatives in low- and middle-income countries across five continents. He’ll share tips on how to be nimble, stick to QI basics, measure smartly and set the right culture to achieve success.
