MGH welcomes health advocate Dr. Sheila Laredo as new Chief of Staff

Michael Garron Hospital (MGH) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Sheila Laredo as the hospital’s new Chief of Staff.

Prior to joining the MGH team, Dr. Laredo held several healthcare leadership roles, most recently as Chief Medical Advisor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). Prior to working at CPSO, she served as Chief of Staff at Women’s College Hospital (WCH). Dr. Laredo holds a PhD in clinical epidemiology and continues her longstanding clinical practice as an endocrinologist based at WCH.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Laredo has been involved in health-related social justice advocacy, which contributed to her interest in her new role at MGH.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, MGH has acted not just as a hospital that happens to sit in the community, but one that actively and thoughtfully partners with the communities it serves,” Dr. Laredo says. She noticed the hospital was quick to identify and fill gaps in care, not just inside the hospital walls, but throughout East Toronto at COVID-19 vaccine clinics and COVID-19 Outreach Centres.

“That appealed to my interest in social justice,” Dr. Laredo says. “So when I saw the Chief of Staff opportunity come up, I thought ‘MGH is the right organization for me’.”

Dr. Laredo’s interest in social justice advocacy began almost 20 years ago when her two young sons were diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). While seeking out treatment options, she discovered that an effective evidence-based therapy program was not government-funded or available, and remained inaccessible to many families impacted by ASD.

Along with a group of 28 families, Dr. Laredo participated in a high-profile constitutional challenge that claimed the government was breaching the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the basis of disability and age by not funding this key program for children with ASD.

“The next thing I knew, I was navigating this lawsuit. It was considered really important in Canada because it was about the extent to which you can use Charter rights to push governments to make policy changes,” she says.

The case was successful in the lower courts, but lost on appeal in 2006, meaning the government was not obliged to fully fund the program. However, since then, the government has expanded the program significantly and now offers it to children up to the age of 18.

“It still doesn’t cover everybody and it doesn’t cover everybody to the extent they need,” Dr. Laredo says. However, the program – now called the Ontario Autism Program – has grown to be a $600 million government initiative that is far more accessible to families today than it was 20 years ago.

The lawsuit hooked Dr. Laredo on the idea that she could make a positive impact through advocacy. In the following years, she was approached by several different groups – including the provincial government – offering her advisory roles related to autism programming. Dr. Laredo shares that she truly enjoyed this work.

“It was the opportunity to take care of more than one person at a time, and to help people you have never met,” she says.

Dr. Laredo’s high-profile advocacy work led to leadership positions at WCH and CPSO. At WCH, she led the introduction of a lean process improvement strategy, introduced supportive 360 reviews for physicians and chaired a Joint Domestic Violence Committee that was launched in the wake of the 2016 murder of Dr. Elana Fric, a Toronto physician.

As MGH’s Chief of Staff, Dr. Laredo is responsible for overseeing the hospital’s physicians, including their quality of work, scope of work, behaviour and credentials. She is also responsible for leading MGH’s safety and risk initiatives.

“I’m very much aligned with the idea of quality improvement and supporting people, as opposed to creating an environment of fear,” she says, adding that creating psychological safety, even in the event of an error, leads to opportunities for physicians and their colleagues to learn and improve.

Laredo acknowledges that it is a difficult time to start in this role due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, especially the Omicron variant that has led to a record number of patients and an increase in staffing shortages across the health system.

Still, after just a few weeks on the job, she shares that what she is experiencing at MGH aligns with her high expectations coming into the organization.

“People at MGH seem to really care about the work that they’re doing and legitimately care about the community – it really drives what they do, it drives their purpose,” she says. “I’m really happy with what I’m seeing.”