CEO Report

December 2025

Table of contents

1.0 Strategy in Action

Excellence in Care: Powered by Discovery

  • Lawson – punching above our weight
  • Renovations begin for new PET/MRI space
  • New network touts health benefit of fermented foods
  • New orientation video promotes excellence in Palliative Care

A Vibrant Workforce

  • Respiratory season vaccinations
  • Operation Christmas Cheer
  • Annual holiday Jingle Cart

Partnering for Impact

  • ‘Veteranomes’ make and share music
  • Professional-development partnership in health equity
  • Joint Mental Health Research and Innovation Day
  • Wound Care education draws more than 100 participants
  • New and additional leadership initiatives in homelessness response

2.0 Operational Updates

  • Being good financial stewards
  • Masking requirements expanded
  • VPs Sandy Jansen and Karen Perkin to retire in 2026
  • Psychiatrist and Surgery leadership announcements

3.0 Recognition

  • Half-century club in diabetes care

4.0 CEO Activity

  • Provincial advocacy for mental-health supports; Taylor Prize in health research; new
    quarterly newsletter launched From the CEO’s Desk

5.0 Federal/Provincial Updates

  • Canada: Dental training ramped up. feds decline comment on national pharmacare
  • Ontario: Omnibus bill includes restrictions on research involving animals; New
    community clinics promise shorter orthopedic wait times

6.0 St. Joseph’s in the News

No updates at this time

7.0 Environmental Scan

No updates at this time

1.0 Strategy in Action

Excellence in Care: Powered by Discovery

Lawson: Punching above our weight
Lawson Research Institute, the innovation arm of St. Joseph’s Health Care London, continues to make big impact beyond its size. A new report from Research InfoSource shows Lawson ranks as the most researcher-intensive institution among mid-sized, hospital-based research centres in Canada. Research InfoSource bases its score in this category on research spending per researcher in 2024. Overall, Lawson ranks 20th among Canada’s top 40 health-research centres. We’re proud to celebrate the many ways #LawsonLeads innovation that improves patient care.

Renovations begin for new PET/MRI space
Lawson is in the beginning stages of renovating space at St. Joseph’s Hospital to prepare for a new positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imagery (PET/MRI) scanner – driving game-changing research into rapid and accurate diagnosis of mental health conditions including post-traumatic stress and depression. Part of a $65.75-million partnership with WSIB to conduct research into workplace injuries, the scanner is an important investment in the future of workplace health in Ontario. Renovations are taking place now and are expected to continue into April 2026. St. Joseph’s is taking care to minimize disruptions to staff, physicians and researchers throughout the project.

New network touts benefit of fermented foods
A one-stop network is the first in North America to generate and share trusted information about the value of fermented foods. The Canadian Fermented Foods Initiative is led by Jeremy Burton, PhD, Interim Vice President Research at St. Joseph’s and Lawson Research Institute and head one of Canada’s largest microbiome research programs.

jars of fermented foods

The initiative, funded by the Weston Family Foundation, launched Nov. 17 with a gathering of research and industry experts from across North America and Europe. It’s part of a nationwide effort to unlock the potential of fermented foods for public health, scientific innovation, and sustainable food systems.

Orientation video promotes excellence in Palliative Care
An orientation video has been created to help potential patients and families who may be seeking end-of-life care, to learn about the excellent care provided at St. Joseph’s Palliative Care Unit (PCU). The video includes images of the PCU, including caregivers, the area’s bright spaces, large rooms, kitchen and other common spaces. A patient who received care participated in the photos, and the family stated; “We almost didn’t come to Parkwood for palliative care because there were no resources that we could see what it was like here.” That same family agreed to participate in a feature story for the website, that will help promote the PCU and the excellent care provided there, and link to the video, which is posted on our website. The feature story and social media posts will be shared in December and the PCU team is sharing the video with referring partners.

A Vibrant Workforce

Respiratory season vaccinations
As of Dec. 5, almost 47 per cent of active staff and 74 per cent of credentialed professional staff (those who hold an appointment at St. Joseph’s Health Care London only) have been confirmed vaccinated against the influenza virus. While those rates are about the same as at this time last year, we also expect some continued increase in vaccination rates as the season progresses. Additionally, we expect some staff may have received vaccinations at other locations or at partner organizations and have not yet notified us.

Operation Christmas Cheer
In what has become an eagerly anticipated tradition, Operation Christmas Cheer returned to all our sites Dec. 9 -11, with senior leadership sharing cookies and hot chocolate with staff, physicians and volunteers.

Annual Holiday Jingle Cart
On Nov. 20, Volunteer Services staff and store volunteers visited various departments at St. Joseph’s Hospital with decorated carts full of holiday giftware and stocking stuffers. The annual Jingle Cart brings shopping opportunities to staff in areas farthest from the on-site store, increasing convenience and showcasing the range of inventory. This year, the Jingle Cart raised $915, and an additional $2,400 in merchandise was sold in store, making it the St. Joseph’s Hospital store’s highest revenue day for sales this year. All revenue supports patient care.

Partnering for Impact

‘Veteranomes’ make and share music
Music therapists Jill Kennedy and Emily McCarthy have spent years working alongside the veterans who call Parkwood Institute home. Over time, they began to realize the talented group of musicians in their midst. Some had spent decades on stage and in bands. Others had played only for joy. But they were there — a harmonica player, a bass guitarist, a singer and a drummer who hadn’t touched a kit in years.

Following months of practicing, veterans John Kirkland, Bill Bard, Frank Labodi and Jim Prouse held their debut concert in late November at Parkwood Institute – their music accompanied by student dancers from H.B. Beal Secondary School.

Professional-development partnership in health equity
St. Joseph’s Equity Diversity Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB) office has begun working with counterparts at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry to co-develop and deliver a continuing professional development session for faculty focused on health equity in practice and education. This collaboration represents an important alignment between organizational EDIB goals and academic efforts to strengthen equity-focused competencies among health-care educators and practitioners. Content development is expected to begin early in 2026. By contributing to this initiative, our organization will extend its reach in supporting system-level transformation and continuous learning in health equity.

Joint Mental Health Research and Innovation Day
About 175 registrants from across the city participated on Nov. 27 in Joint Mental Health Research and Innovation Day, co-hosted by St. Joseph’s Health Care London, Lawson Research Institute, London Health Sciences Centre and LHSCRI and Western University’s Department of Psychiatry. This event featured more than 40 presentations, including oral and poster sessions across diverse mental health research topics. A highlight of the day was a keynote address by Dr. Valerie Taylor, Department Head of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary, on the link between a healthy gut microbiome and mood disorders, and emerging opportunities in mental health drug discovery.

Wound Care education draws 100 practitioners
Paulo Da Rosa, a Clinical Nurse Specialist for wound care at Parkwood Institute, collaborated with WoundWISETM and Clinical Nurse Specialist Lina Martins from London Health Sciences Centre to plan an educational event in November about advanced wound healing for acute and chronic wounds. About 100 health-care practitioners from community agencies and hospitals including St. Joseph's received practical, hands-on product training and best practice education. WoundWISETM is a new Canadian event series for health care professionals caring for individuals experiencing skin- and wound-related challenges.

New and additional leadership initiatives in homelessness response
Jodi Younger, Vice President Patient Care and Quality, whose expertise has been invaluable in the citywide Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response, has been named the chair of the new mental health and addiction service cluster and will be the co-chair of the initiative’s leadership table.

Additionally, key internal stakeholders recently received training on the City of London - Coordinated Access for Housing platform. Through participation, external partners have increased understanding of “homeless in hospital” – insights that positively impact prioritization for housing. Working together has enabled greater understanding and transparency among internal and external stakeholders.

2.0 Operational Updates

Being good financial stewards
Financial stewardship is everyone’s role, and each of us contributes to sustaining the services our community relies on. Part of being good financial stewards is balancing our budget. For fiscal 2025/2026, St. Joseph’s is projecting an operating budget deficit due to inflation from hospital salaries, benefits and supplies and a gap between Health Ministry funding and our expenses. Hospitals across the province are facing similar budget issues.

To address our deficit, St. Joseph’s has launched Project Tyche, a multi-year, phased effort to find efficiencies while keeping our core services steady and minimizing impact on staff and patients. Project Tyche Phase One will focus on: Overall financial stewardship; benchmarking – learning from similar organization how they maximize resources; attendance at work; reducing turnover; and evaluating unfunded volumes and services.

Masking requirements expanded
New masking requirements – predicated on our responsibility to safeguard the health of people who seek and provide care at St. Joseph’s – have been implemented as of Dec. 15. Because of a surge in respiratory infections across the region, masking is required for staff, physicians, students and volunteers in all direct patient care and clinical settings, and is recommended in common spaces such as hallways and break rooms. For patients, residents and visitors, masking is strongly recommended; and is required for high-risk populations and patients with symptoms.

VPs Sandy Jansen and Karent Perkin to retire
After a remarkable career dedicated to advancing exceptional patient care, organizational excellence, and collaborative regional leadership, Sandy Jansen will retire from her role as Vice President, Patient Care and Risk Management at St. Joseph’s at the end of May 2026. Throughout her diverse career, Sandy has always exemplified her philosophy that leadership is defined by the courage, compassion and humility you demonstrate every day and never taking for granted the privilege it is to be a leader.

Karen Perkin, Vice President Patient Care and Chief Nurse Executive (CNE), will retire at the end of March 2026, following a stellar 40-year career at St. Joseph’s. Karen has played a key leadership role as the organization navigated health services restructuring, organizational transformations and two pandemics. Her unwavering passion for research and academia has been instrumental in growing an academic mandate at St. Joseph’s and the recognition of our organization as a RNAO Best Practice Spotlight Organization.

St. Joseph’s has launched executive searches for those roles to ensure continued leadership in exceptional care and service.
Psychiatrist and surgery leadership announcements

Dr. Patricia Hall has been appointed to the Department of Psychiatry in the following roles: Department Head at St Joseph's and LHSC; and Chair, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University. The positions are effective Dec. 1, 2025, to Nov. 30, 2030.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Emil Schemitsch’s appointment to the Department of Surgery has been extended in the following roles: Chair (Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University) and Department Head (London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and St. Joseph’s Health Care London (St. Joseph’s). The continued appointments will be effective Jan. 1, 2026 to June 30, 2026, or until a new Chair/Department Head is appointed.

3.0 Recognition

Half-century club in diabetes care
We celebrated 17 members of our Diabetes Program for an extraordinary milestone: 50 years of living with diabetes. They were celebrated at our annual Diabetes Half-Century Awards, where their resilience, determination and strength were highlighted. Their stories continue to inspire our entire community.

4.0 CEO Activity

  • I was proud to attend Queen’s Park Nov. 20-with Jodi Younger, Indwell Clinical Director Steven Rolfe, and mental health care and supportive-housing partners from across the province -to meet with government officials and discuss the critical needs of individuals in our communities, including the need to prioritize supportive housing for people with mental illness or substance use disorders.
  • On Nov. 25, I and a number of other St. Joseph’s/Lawson leaders and members of the Board attended the Taylor Prize dinner, a Robarts Research Institute at Western University event honouring innovators who have made significant contributions to basic or clinical research.
  • From the CEO’s Desk, my new quarterly newsletter, aims to strengthen communication with staff, physicians, learners, researchers and volunteers by fostering transparency and encouraging multi-way communication through a Share with Roy segment. The inaugural newsletter was sent to staff on Monday, Nov. 3 and generated strong engagement in unique views, with average time spent per user at more than three minutes.

5.0 Federal/Provincial Updates

Canada

Dental training ramped up
The federal government has announced $35 million to train more dentists and dental assistants. The funding will go towards colleges and universities and help fill the federal commitment to provide dental care to people of all ages to people in households with an income of less than $90,000 and no dental insurance.

Feds decline comment on fully funded essential medicines
Health Minister Marjorie Michel is dismissing the key finding of an expert advisory committee on pharmacare, which says Ottawa should fully fund a list of essential medicines without cutting deals with the premiers. The committee's report says the federal government should create the list and provide funding to ensure all Canadians can get essential medication at no cost – but the Health Minister said on Nov. 24 that provinces and territories are responsible for delivering health care and her government's role is to negotiate with them.

Ontario

Omnibus bill includes restrictions on research involving animals
A bill introduced into the Ontario Legislature includes restrictions on “invasive research” involving cats and dogs. Exemptions are: some research using animals is allowed if for a veterinary purpose; and research can happen at a registered research facility if it meets specific criteria, including oversight by an an animal care committee made up of at least one veterinarian oversees any research proposals involving animals. The proposed legislation would also ban breeding and selling animals for medical research. Public consultations about the bill have started taking place.

New community clinics promise shorter orthopedic wait times
Four new, community-based orthopedic centres will open in Ontario next year to reduce wait times for knee and hip replacements. As previously reported, Ontario called for applications earlier this year. The following sites will be licenced to deliver those surgeries: OV Surgical Centre of Toronto, Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa (AOAO), Windsor Orthopedic Surgical Centre and Schroeder Ambulatory Centre.

6.0 St. Joseph’s in the News

Several media outlets published stories featuring Jeremy Burton, PhD, Interim Vice President Research about the new Canadian Fermented Foods Initiative, above. Collectively, these earned-media stories represented an ad-value equivalent of $90,360. (Source: Meltwater Analytics):

Geriatrician and researcher Dr. Jaspreet Bhangu offered expert insights into the need for stronger national response to the development of new medications to treat Alzheimer’s disease:

Coverage continued about provincial and local developments in health research involving animals:

Other news featuring St. Joseph’s: 

7.0 Environmental Scan