Kashtin Helps West Toronto Work Together
When Kashtin Fitzsimons discovered the role for Director of Operations at the West Toronto Ontario Health Team (WTOHT), he realized this was the chance to create the dream that many had brought up wherever he worked – “wouldn’t it be great if we all worked together?”
The benefit multi-level participation in healthcare is something Kashtin witnessed early in his career working in outreach for a community health centre in Toronto’s Bathurst and Finch area. From there, he would spend the next seven years working in long-term care, retirement, and homecare applying those lessons to quality improvement work for those services.
On his spare time, you will often find Kashtin playing Basketball, something he describes as “fitting” for the work he does. “Building teams, coaching teams, and being a part of a team is a passion of mine” he says. “It’s fascinating to see what can be accomplished when people put their heads together,” he continues.
Creating a partnership between patients, caregivers, community members and healthcare providers is key to the work Kashtin and his team does at the West Toronto OHT to support the development of a localized patient-centred care system.
For Kashtin, he believes there is still work to be done.
“I think about this quite a lot – how technology is both a barrier and an enabler,” he expresses.
It was an eye-opening experience in his previous role introducing smart speakers to older adults. “They were connected to an app on a tablet and computer, devices for which many patients had not grown up with. Yet, when they learned how it can truly benefit their care experience, I saw how open they were to getting familiar with it,” says Kashtin.
Some of the WTOHT’s priority populations are people seeking senior services, or mental health and addiction services. Often, accessing these services are not an easy task. One of his immediate goals since taking the position in October 2022, is to remedy this by leveraging technology to digitally enhance the patient navigation experience when seeking these services.
As a long-term goal for the OHT, Kashtin believes it’s how well collaboration efforts and innovation are harmonized – “That’s how we create meaningful change.”
“The reason I started in and continue in healthcare is because I truly believe that what we do matters every day. That’s what’s really motivating.”