Ending the Throughput Crisis: How Surgeons, ED Physicians, and Nurse Leaders Can Transform Safety, Staffing, and Financial Performance | Webinar | September 2026

Hospitals facing ED overcrowding, workforce strain, capacity shortages, and financial pressure may have an important source of these problems hiding in plain sight: artificial peaks created by scheduled admissions. This webinar will show how hospitals have used patient flow smoothing to reduce overcrowding and cancellations, improve patient safety, access and clinician satisfaction, increase patient throughput, and strengthen financial performance, often without adding beds or staff.

Learning Objectives

• Acknowledge the perspectives and priorities of C-suite leaders, surgeons, ED physicians, and nursing leaders in addressing patient flow challenges.
• Frame patient flow and scheduled admissions as hospital-wide operational design issues that influence capacity, access, and care delivery.
• Set expectations for how patient flow smoothing can improve financial performance, patient safety, workforce experience, access, and operational efficiency.

CECs: 1

By attending this program, offered by HCMC, participants may earn up to 1 ACHE Qualifying Education Hour toward initial certification or recertification of the Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) designation.

Speakers:

Shaf Keshavjee MD

Shaf Keshavjee is a thoracic and lung transplant surgeon. He is Chief of Innovation at University Health Network (UHN). He is Professor of Thoracic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering and Vice Chair for Innovation, Department of Surgery, Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto (UofT).

Dr Keshavjee completed his medical training at UofT in 1985. He subsequently trained in General Surgery, Cardiac Surgery and Thoracic Surgery at UofT followed by fellowship training at Harvard University and the University of London for airway surgery and heart-lung transplantation, respectively. He joined the faculty at UofT in 1994 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2002. Dr. Keshavjee was the inaugural holder of the Pearson-Ginsberg Chair in Thoracic Surgery and served as the Chair of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2010. He served as Surgeon-in-Chief of University Health Network from 2010-2022 and the Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program from 1997-2025. He currently holds the Donald K Jackson Chair in Lung Transplant Research.

Dr Keshavjee’s clinical practice is in thoracic oncology, lung cancer and lung transplantation. He has a passion for surgery and innovative research. He is a Senior Scientist and Director, Latner Thoracic Laboratories in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, UHN. He leads a large team of researchers in a foremost pulmonary research program and is widely published in the field. His specific research interest is in lung injury and repair related to transplantation. His current research involves the study of support systems, molecular diagnostics and gene therapy to repair organs and to engineer superior organs for transplantation.

Dr. Keshavjee has served on the board of directors of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, the Canadian Society of Transplantation, and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, where he also served as Treasurer and 102nd President. He has received numerous awards for contributions to medicine, including the George Armstrong Peters Young Investigator Award, Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award, the Colin Woolf Award for Excellence in Medical Education, and the Lister Prize in Surgery - the highest award for research achievement in the Department of Surgery at UofT. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and in 2025 was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been awarded Honorary Doctor of Science Degrees from both Ryerson University and Queen’s University. He was also awarded an Honorary Fellowship to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for his service to mankind.

He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Society for Transplantation, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Canadian Blood Services, and the American Society of Transplantation Innovation Award for contributions to the field of lung transplantation. He was awarded the prestigious Medawar Prize from the Transplantation Society for his profound influence on the field of organ transplantation. He received the prestigious Flance-Karl Award from the American Surgical Association - awarded to a surgeon who has made a seminal contribution in basic laboratory research which has been applied to clinical surgery for his work in ex vivo organ perfusion. He also received the FNG Starr Award - the highest national award from the Canadian Medical Association recognizing a physician for their outstanding and inspiring lifetime achievement.

Dr Keshavjee has received two Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals and the national Governor General’s Award for Innovation. He was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2013 and appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 2014. In 2025 he was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada, which is Canada’s Highest Civilian Award.

Linda Laskowski-Jones, MS, APRN, ACNS-BC, CEN, NEA-BC, NREMT, FAWM, FAEN, FAAN

Linda Laskowski-Jones is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nursing for Wolters Kluwer. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Nursing, and a certificate in Nursing Administration from University of Delaware and completed the executive track in Managing Healthcare Delivery at Harvard Business School. Her roles span clinical nursing, advanced practice, education, and leadership. She served as director and then vice president of Emergency and Trauma Services for 18 years during her 32 year tenure at ChristianaCare Health System. She was a nurse reviewer for the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma Consultation and Verification Program for 20 years. She is an appointed member of the Delaware Trauma System Committee and is State Chair of the Trauma Quality Evaluation Committee. She is appointed to the Advanced Practice Committee of Delaware Board of Nursing and was a board member and past president. Linda is on editorial boards of the Journal of Emergency Nursing and International Emergency Nursing. She is President of the Delaware State Council of the Emergency Nurses Association.

Eugene Litvak, PhD

President and CEO of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Optimization. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Operations Management in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), Prior to his current position, he was a co-founder and director of the Program for the Management of Variability in Health Care Delivery at the Boston University (BU) Health Policy Institute and a Professor at the BU School of Management. Before joining Boston University Dr. Litvak was a faculty member at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

He is an author of more than 60 publications in the areas of operations management in healthcare delivery organizations. He was the editor of The Joint Commission’s patient flow books “Managing Patient Flow in Hospitals: Strategies and Solutions”, 2nd Edition and “Optimizing Patient Flow: Advanced Strategies for Managing Variability to Enhance Access, Quality, and Safety” as well as the leader of the organization’s first patient flow seminars. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine (currently the National Academy of Medicine) Committees “The Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System”, “The Learning Health Care System in America” and “Optimizing Scheduling in Health Care.” Dr. Litvak also served as a member of the “National Advisory Committee to the American Hospital Association for Improving Quality, Patient Safety and Performance”.  

Since 1995 he has led the development and practical application of innovative approaches for managing patient flow variability (introduced by him and Dr. Long) for cost reduction and quality improvement in health care delivery systems. Application of these approaches has resulted in significant quality improvement and multimillion-dollar improvements in the margins for every hospital that has applied them. He is also Principal Investigator in many US, Canada and UK hospital and hospital systems operations improvement projects. These include CMS sponsored initiative “Partnership for Patients” in NJ and nationwide patient flow initiative in Scotland
 

Cheri Ward, MPH, DPT

Cheri Ward is Senior Vice President at the Institute for Healthcare Optimization.  Cheri is responsible for the management of hospital initiatives to improve patient flow. She has led patient flow initiatives that simultaneously increased the quality of care while decreasing costs at a wide range of US and international healthcare delivery organizations including academic medical centers, community hospitals, cancer clinics, as well as multi-hospital programs in the US, Canada, and Scotland.

Cheri holds an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health with a concentration in health policy and management and has co-authored a chapter on patient flow assessment in a book published by The Joint Commission “Optimizing Patient Flow: Advanced Strategies for Managing Variability to Enhance Access, Quality, and Safety”. Prior to her current role at IHO, Cheri accumulated over 10 years of clinical experience providing care in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, outpatient clinics and home settings. These roles provided her with critical insights into patient flow struggles experienced by front-line staff. Cheri has utilized her unique combination of experiences to ensure that critical goals of improving staff satisfaction, staff retention, and quality of patient care are balanced with cost reduction and process optimization to create the most efficient healthcare system possible.
 

On-Demand Access

Only HCMC members will have access to the on-demand recording of this webinar. Non-members will be able to view the LIVE session only and will not have access to the recording afterward.

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