St. Mary’s Hospital and McGill give family medicine in Quebec a boost
St. Mary's Hospital Center (SMHC) strengthens its proficiency and its reputation of excellence in family medicine by welcoming the first McGill Chair in Family and Community Medicine Research
Efficient and adapted first line health care services lead to better outcomes for patients and reduced costs for the government. A major step forward in order to reinforce and advance first line health care in Quebec is the creation of the first McGill Chair in Family and Community Medicine Research, based at SMHC. The chair-holder is Dr. Jeannie Haggerty, an international expert in the evaluation of health care services; she took up her new position at SMHC on January 4th, 2010. Dr. Haggerty is also an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine.
"As a community-oriented institution focused on improving the services delivered to our patients, we are extremely happy that Dr. Jeannie Haggerty has accepted this position of Chair of research at SMHC. Welcome to St Mary's!" says Dr. Arvind K. Joshi, Director and CEO of SMHC. "Her work in epidemiology and on the organization of medical care will reinforce our University Affiliated Hospital Centre status, further strengthen our already well-recognized expertise in family medicine, and reinforce our local, national and international partnerships."
In fact, this new research chair will build on the existing expertise at SMHC, which has been recognized as one of Quebec's leaders in community-oriented care for more than 30 years. It will also improve the quality of the services offered by suggesting innovative solutions to help multidisciplinary teams work more efficiently, or to increase accessibility to, and delivery of care to ethnic minorities, for example.
"I love the fact that St. Mary's is a community hospital in a complex environment. Its doctors and other health professionals have to be very committed to providing solid general services to a multi-ethnic population and to establishing very good links with highly specialized services to meet the full range of needs," explains Dr. Haggerty. "I was impressed by the stated desire to make sure that research was responsive to the community served by St. Mary's. Over the next few years I hope to contribute to the creation of structures to capture patients' and care-givers' concerns and to partner with clinicians in doing research on questions that occur in their day-to-day contact with patients."
"Improving our capacity to investigate common illnesses and validate therapies is critical to delivering optimal care in Family Medicine," said Richard I. Levin, Vice-Principal of Health Affairs and Dean of Medicine at McGill. "I am delighted to welcome Dr. Haggerty to the Faculty of Medicine, and I'm confident her expertise and drive will take our already strong department of family medicine to new academic heights. For the vast majority of the people our health-care system serves, there is nothing more important than top-quality, accessible family medical care. McGill is very proud to champion this crucial area of medical research and practice."
Dr. Jeannie Haggerty will be the first holder of the McGill Chair in Family and Community Medicine Research. She has spent the past 10 years measuring the accessibility and the quality of the care delivered to Canadian patients in order to make sure that their voices, and those of their care-givers, are taken into consideration by decision-makers. Her seminal work on the conceptualization of continuity of care is cited internationally.
The quality of her research has earned her numerous grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ministère de la santé et des services sociaux du Québec. It has also allowed her to hold a Canada Research Chair on "Population Impacts of Primary Health-Care Organization and Practice". She has published 24 articles in peer-reviewed publications, several in prestigious journals, and collaborated on various books and official reports. The high caliber of her work is also renowned outside of Canada. Dr. Haggerty is the current president of the North American Primary Care Research Group, the premier international forum for presenting new knowledge in primary health care. She has taken an active role in the advocacy for and organization of research on primary health care services and policy in Canada and internationally.
This chair was created thanks to an endowment fund provided by the St. Mary's Hospital Foundation.
St. Mary's Hospital Center (SMHC) is a university affiliated community hospital which serves a multicultural population. It seeks to provide the highest level of safe patient and family focused care. St. Mary's is an integral part of the Réseau universitaire intégré de santé (RUIS) McGill.
