In an ever-changing and challenging health-care environment, it is critical that Mount Sinai Hospital has a plan in place to ensure we maintain and build on our reputation as one of Canada’s pre-eminent academic health centres.

Mount Sinai Hospital’s five-year Strategic Plan to the year 2010 is called Building on the Best and looks at both our internal and external environments.

Internally, we have created Centres of Excellence to better align research and clinical care, which in turn better serves our patients and their families.

We have also developed and executed our revitalized branding initiative, which helps differentiate Mount Sinai and creates awareness in a competitive fundraising landscape.

Externally, we are working with the Government of Ontario through the new Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) to better position ourselves to serve the community and to more clearly define our role within the broader health-care system, which itself is undergoing a transformation and has a heightened focus on transparency, accountability and system-wide integration.

With an aging population and the cost of health care rising, we want to ensure Mount Sinai is positioned for sustainability and growth in the future as well as the present.

And at the heart of all we do must be the patient experience — within our walls and across the continuum of care. We are exploring partnership opportunities in order to enhance our capacity to provide high-quality patient care and how to enrich our Centres of Excellence in a changing environment with an array of emerging strategic issues.