Paula Blackstien-Hirsch

Paula Blackstien-Hirsch

Consultant, Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Paula Blackstien-Hirsch is Principal Consultant, Quality thru Improvement, a consultancy focused on strategic governance and leadership of healthcare quality, patient/family partnership for improved quality, and staff capability for improvement. Paula is also core faculty for the University of Toronto’s Masters of Quality and Patient Safety within the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Paula has held several senior executive and management roles including Senior Director with the Canadian Patient Safety Institute; founding Executive Director for the Centre for Healthcare Quality Improvement – a provincially funded agency that supported cross-sector quality improvement; Director for the Hospital Report Research Collaborative – that included six universities and several research institutes; Research Coordinator with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; and Senior Consultant with Agnew Peckham and Associates, and was adjunct faculty with the UK-based NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Paula has served on a number of not-for-profit Boards, and is Faculty, Central Support Team on Governance and Leadership for Ontario Health Teams, sponsored by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

Paula has a Masters Degree in Health Administration from the University of Toronto, a Masters Degree in Clinical Epidemiology from McMaster University, and an undergraduate degree in Physical Therapy from the University of Toronto. She has completed several quality improvement, governance and leadership certification programs delivered by agencies such as the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.