Brian Harvey

Why did you choose Wagner for graduate school?

Working in the health field, I became acutely aware of the systemic challenges facing modern healthcare. In Canada, we face significant access pressures related to chronic illness and demographic trends. But as the health statistics show, these access challenges are shared around the world and stand only to worsen over time. Charged with this perspective, I applied to NYU Wagner to acquire skill in evaluating and implementing evidence-based practices to improve health care quality and efficiency.

The reason I chose Wagner, specifically, was twofold. First, it offered such an innovative health policy and management program (ranked 2nd in the U.S.) that crossed traditional boundaries of health policy, management, and finance to tackle intractable health challenges. Secondly, I knew being based in New York City, with a highly diverse population and some of the leading hospitals in the world, would offer unparalleled experiences to achieve advancements in the health field.

How did being in New York impact your professional journey?

I had a rich opportunity to explore career opportunities in healthcare by networking with highly intelligent and accomplished health leaders. Through this collaboration, I determined that the field of quality and patient safety could bring about positive change and address systemic challenges facing healthcare. I knew instantly this is how I could make an impact in healthcare and where I wanted to grow my career. I also had the opportunity to gain practical experience in quality improvement by a) developing a process and business model for the Dept. of Orthopedics at Montefiore Health System for my final capstone project, and by b) learning about Mount Sinai’s award-winning approach to change management and project management during an internship. By learning about this approach, I was able to gain specialized knowledge of what it takes to achieve system-wide transformation.

Describe your current job.

I work as the Accreditation Lead at Unity Health Toronto, a Catholic health-care organization comprised of St. Joseph's Health Centre, St. Michael's Hospital, and Providence Healthcare, which together work to advance the health of everyone in our Toronto urban communities and beyond. As Accreditation Lead, my role is to help lead the organization through its first Accreditation journey as a network, and be the primary point-of-contact and driver to support the related planning, communication, and staff and physician engagement. A key part of my role is also to support improvement planning and implementation and proactively identify what changes in practice may be required to ensure the standards are just part of what we do every day. It has been an honour to support the team leads and key stakeholders across the organization, to facilitate quality, safety, and patient & staff experience across Unity Health.