Integrated Community Program Impact Report 2025

We are inventing the future of seamless health care

Five years ago, Sunnybrook made a bold move. Recognizing that our Hospital is one of several stops on the care journey, we committed to ensuring that the transitions to and from Sunnybrook are as seamless as possible.

We established the Integrated Community Program: a unified range of inpatient and outpatient services to break down the silos between hospital and home, deepen our partnerships with local care providers and community health organizations, and advance our mandate as both a major academic health sciences centre and a community hospital for the residents of North Toronto.

We are leading an integrated hospital program designed to help keep people independent at every age and stage of life – and we are doing it with the generous support of donors like you.

In this report, we are excited to showcase the many ways that your gifts are helping people stay healthy in our community, while providing access to Sunnybrook’s specialized programs, innovations and experts when and where they need it. Our excellence in community health would not be possible without your support and engagement. Thank you.

Your gift is elevating the unique expertise and remarkable collaboration across a range of services within the Integrated Community Program, the Hospital and the community. Together we are inventing the future of seamless health care.” Dr. Steven Shadowitz, outgoing Chief of Sunnybrook’s Integrated Community Program

Keeping seniors SHARP

Donor support helped to turn a children’s hospital
activity booklet into an award-winning program to
empower seniors and reduce their risk of delirium
and time spent in hospital.

Adapted by a Sunnybrook team, the Sunnybrook
Hospital Activity & Resource Package (SHARP)
offers hospitalized seniors tips on how to stay healthy,
provides cognitive stimulation activities, and shares
details on discharge and community resources.

More than two-thirds of participating patients felt the
booklet helped them stay well, feel engaged and leave
the hospital, earning SHARP a 2025 Leading Practice
award from Canada’s Health Standards Organization.
This resource is now available across the Hospital
thanks to donor support.

Emergency care, faster

A donor-funded pilot to enhance physician scheduling in the Emergency Department (ED) overnight has dramatically improved wait times in Sunnybrook’s ED.

One year ago, the longest time to physician initial assessment was 10 hours for non-urgent patients. Just five months into the pilot project, that number dropped to six-and-a-half hours for the final 10 per cent of waiting patients, with most seeing an ED physician within three-and-a-half hours of triage.

The project, which launched in January 2025, also allows Sunnybrook the flexibility to expand the emergency physician team during peak day shifts. Evaluation of the pilot is ongoing to assess, scale and replicate the model.

“This project is proving transformational, and it’s not just because we’re making a difference in the lives of thousands of patients. Your gifts have grounded our team in a shared purpose and created a platform and motivation for system-wide change,” says Dr. Justin Hall, Sunnybrook’s chief of emergency medicine.

The Ministry of Health recently invited Dr. Hall to share Sunnybrook’s expanded model of care with more than 250 clinicians, administrators and policymakers from across Ontario.

Bridging gaps in primary care

Sunnybrook’s Bridging Care Clinic launched on
April 1, 2025 as a three-year pilot project to bridge the gaps in primary care, alleviate the strain on hospitals and match unattached patients to local practitioners.

Recent research shows that 25 per cent of people who visit the emergency department do not have primary care providers. Sunnybrook is addressing this challenge by supporting patients referred from our ED who do not have a family physician.

Just weeks after opening, the Bridging Care Clinic is running two half-days per week and supported by three family physicians, an interprofessional team and medical residents in their final months of training to become a family doctor.

“We’re growing quickly thanks to donor support,” says Dr. Karen Fleming, chief of Sunnybrook’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, adding that the clinic hours will double again by September 2025.

In addition to equipping the clinic space, philanthropy provided funds to support clinical research fellows to conduct research on the barriers to securing a family doctor so the clinic can become even more responsive.

Training future leaders in kidney care

Donor support enables fellowships that shape the careers and expertise of future clinicians. In particular, philanthropy fuels fellowships in Sunnybrook’s Division of Nephrology, which empower new physicians with the skills required to address complex kidney disorders. Physicians like Dr. Sachin Pasricha, who began a specialized nephrology training at Sunnybrook in Summer 2025.

Dr. Pasricha was completing a nephrology fellowship at the University of Toronto when Sunnybrook made an offer
he couldn’t refuse: the chance to deepen his expertise with a Complex Hypertension Fellowship mentored by some of the leading clinicians in the field.

Kidney disease and hypertension often go hand-in-hand, and one condition can cause or worsen the other. That’s why it is critical to support more physicians who are equipped to address these complementary diseases.

Dr. Pasricha’s one-year, donor-funded appointment includes research and patient care within Sunnybrook’s hypertension clinic, where he has access to an interdisciplinary team and specialized treatments like renal denervation, an ablation procedure funded entirely by donations and available at only a handful of centres in Canada.

He will also be able to collaborate with other major hypertension centres at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.

“By supporting fellowships, you’re not just investing in a single physician; you’re investing in the countless lives we will impact with our expertise and discoveries,” says Dr. Pasricha.