Meet Our 2023 BC Quality Awards Winners and Runners-Up!

Bill Clifford

Retired Chief Medical Information Officer, Northern Health

Described by colleagues as a visionary leader, innovator, mentor, genius, and one-half physician/one-half IT techie, Bill Clifford is the cultivator of the health information technology that physicians across BC use to improve patient care – a user-friendly, electronic medical record system called the Medical Office Information System, which he launched in 1990.

Kelly Mayson

Anesthesiologist, Vancouver Coastal Health

While she has been involved in many quality improvement initiatives over the years, there are two that feed Dr. Kelly Mayson’s passion for improving patient outcomes by focusing on care before and after surgery – the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) initiative, and the provincial Surgical Patient Optimization Collaborative (SPOC).

Michel White

Patient Advisor, Fraser Health

Michel has been an outspoken advocate for including the patient voice in health care since volunteering with the Patient Voices Network in 2008. Over the years, she has added her insights to many initiatives, particularly Fraser Health’s Physician Quality Improvement program, originally as a patient advisor for individual projects and then as a PQI Steering Committee member, enabling her to add the voice of the patient to decisions affecting quality improvement throughout the health authority.

Christopher Stuart

Physician, Island Health

Christopher Stuart leads collaboratively, bringing together care providers to form a team around his patients – with his patients as the most important team member. He develops respectful relationships between patients, caregivers and practitioners, with humility and transparency.

Viva Swanson

Advisor, Leadership Development NE, Northern Health

Viva Swanson’s work has significantly improved how people are cared for in BC’s northeastern communities, which are among the most culturally diverse and remote in the province, with residents facing daily challenges accessing health care.

Sara Waters

Clinical Education Lead for Anesthesia at Royal Jubilee Hospital, Island Medical Program, Island Health

Sara Waters creates avenues for team building to occur, spearheading social events that bring together surgical teams, including nurses, physicians, radiologists, anesthesiologists, anesthetic assistants, and porters. The result – a sense of community and camaraderie that has paid dividends in the operating room.

Elizabeth Baron

Regional Director, Experience in Care, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver Coastal Health

Elizabeth (Liz) Baron is a regional director for VCH’s Experience in Care program – a program she pioneered. She built a comprehensive strategy for improving care experiences that centres on human connections and fostering a culture where everyone feels valued and empowered to make a positive impact.

Shyr Chui

Radiologist and Past Physician Quality Improvement Co-chair, Northern Health

As Regional Medical Lead of Diagnostic Imaging from 2014-19, Dr. Shyr Chui helped transform the culture of Regional radiology by introducing a Joy in Work initiative into his own department, inspired by work at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI), engaging the team, generating change ideas and measuring their impact on joy in work in the department.

Real-Time Virtual Support Network & The First Nations Virtual Care Initiatives (joint winners)

First Nations Health Authority, the Rural Coordination Centre of BC, and others

The Real-Time Virtual Support Network is a team-based, wrap-around service that links rural health care providers and patients to virtual physicians, psychiatrists, mental health clinicians, care coordinators and specialists via Zoom videoconferencing or telephone. It also offers multiple ways for patients and providers to access culturally safe care and support.

Outreach Urban Health Clinic

Interior Health

The Outreach Urban Health Clinic in Kelowna is an innovative clinic that provides primary care, mental health and harm reduction in one location – these services were previously dispersed across different locations.

The COVID-19 Rapid Response Team 

BC Centre for Disease Control

The COVID-19 Rapid Response Team is a robust suite of provincial health services, staffed by 824 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, contact tracers, data entry clerks, operations staff, and clinical and non-clinical leaders. It supported the entire province by providing key critical COVID-19 services, ensuring the availability and accessibility of care across BC when it was needed most.

PPE Testing Laboratory

Vancouver Coastal Health

Located at Vancouver General Hospital, the PPE Testing Laboratory has become the Canadian leader in personal protective equipment (PPE) testing solutions, ensuring its quality for BC health care workers, and supporting Canadian PPE manufacturers to strengthen national PPE supplies.

The Virtual Interpreter

Vancouver Coastal Health

The Virtual Interpreter provides on-demand, live medical interpreters through a wi-fi enabled tablet in care locations across the health authority. It has led to better care decisions and outcomes for patients who have benefited from its use.

Connect and Recover Injury Management Program

BC Emergency Health Services, Provincial Health Services Authority

After realizing that gaps in coordination of care were leading to critical safety events for children with cardiac conditions during non-cardiac surgery, an interdisciplinary team at BC Children’s Hospital sprung into action. Together, they developed a protocol that has brought the number of critical safety events down to zero, ensuring safer care for their vulnerable young patients.

St. Paul’s Remote Cochlear Implant Program

Providence Health

The Remote Cochlear Implant Program at St. Paul’s Hospital enables implant recipients to undergo mapping of the device through a virtual platform. It means patients outside of Greater Vancouver either no longer need to leave their home community for follow-up visits, or have a closer health care centre for their appointments

Reducing Medication Administration Times at Queen’s Park Care Centre

Fraser Health

A multidisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, care aides, pharmacists, clinical nurse educators and quality improvement nurses had a goal: To reduce the time it takes to administer morning medications by just three minutes per resident by Oct. 31, 2021. They were successful and their achievement helped make more time for resident care.

The Indigenous Palliative Care Projects

Vancouver Coastal Health, in partnership with Tsleil-Waututh Nation

Through the Indigenous Palliative Care Projects, Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Vancouver Coastal Health identified gaps, barriers and priorities to improving palliative care services. With this information in hand, they set a plan in motion to integrate VCH and Tsleil-Waututh Nation resources so that individuals are fully supported in their final journey.

Reducing Patient Transfers between Banfield Pavilion and Vancouver General Hospital

Vancouver Coastal Health

The Banfield Pavilion health care team successfully reduced the number of transfers of its long-term care residents to the Vancouver General Hospital emergency department. They were seeing six to 10 transfers each month, many of which were not medically necessary and likely avoidable.

Roots to Read – Newborn Literacy Program

Island Health

Roots to Read is a program that educates, equips and empowers families in Nanaimo with information and tools to promote literacy and language development in their child, beginning at birth – because the way families interact with their children from the moment they are born matters immensely to how they develop language and interact socially.