“Understanding how to effectively reduce non-evidence based practices reflects a commitment to evidence-based medicine that will help optimize outcomes and contain healthcare spending. The PSI Graham Farquharson Fellowship Award will provide me with the support I need to be a successful lifetime KT scientist and help me elevate the standard of care across Canada through reduction of harmful non-evidence based practices, benefitting Ontarians, Canadians and the global community.”
The PSI Foundation is pleased to announce Dr. Angel Arnaout of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute as the 2017 PSI Graham Farquharson KT Fellow. This Fellowship — valued at $150,000 per year for two years — is intended to protect a new, promising clinician’s research time, allowing the Fellow to undertake high impact translational research.
The Ontario government’s 2016 Patient’s First: Action Plan for Health Care, identified the need to protect, prolong and sustain our universal healthcare system by ensuring the best value for healthcare resources; thereby also improving access and health care resource availability for patients that need them. A major cause of waste of healthcare resources is low-value care, a treatment or procedure for which there is no evidence of benefit or there is an indication of more harm than benefit. It is estimated that low value care represents up to 30% of the costs of healthcare. The PSI Graham Farquharson Fellowship Award allows Dr. Arnaout to undertake a substantial research program informed by state-of-the-art approaches from implementation science to develop and evaluate major initiatives to reduce low-value care in Ontario. Specifically, she will be focusing on the Choosing Wisely surgical initiative of reducing unnecessary advanced preoperative imaging in surgical patients (the Diagnostic Imaging Safety in Ontario – Leading Value and Effectiveness (DISSOLVE) Project). A direct result of this fellowship project will be a better understanding of the extent, drivers, and testing of effective methods to eliminate low value care, which will then serve as a framework for implementation of other Choosing Wisely initiatives; and will have immediate direct benefits for the Ontario healthcare system and the patients it serves through the reduction of low-value care.
Dr. Arnaout is a Breast Surgical Oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital and Associate Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Arnaout has won numerous national awards for her work including the “Best Innovation in Cancer Care Delivery Award” at the Canadian Ontario Provincial Showcase, the Canadian Association of General Surgeon’s Research Award, and the Order of Ottawa. As a member of the Ottawa Center for Implementation Research, her passion is to set the standard for best practices in breast care delivery in Canada, through efforts of greater use of evidence-based guidance. She intends to use her research and leadership to raise the standard of breast care delivered in Canada, improve the quality of life of women with breast disease, and promote the responsible use of healthcare resources.
