Inaugural appointments in DFCM’s Office of Health System Partnership

It is our great pleasure to announce the inaugural appointments within DFCM’s Office of Health System Partnership, which arose from the partnership announcement between DFCM and Ontario Health Toronto Region.

Dr. Ryan Banach is the Family Medicine Health Human Resources Lead, a role that will guide the development, implementation, refinement and evaluation of supports needed to help family doctors enter and stay in office-based practice in the Toronto region. 

Dr. Rajesh Girdhari is the Digital Health Lead, a role that will work with Ontario Health-Toronto Region to support the rollout of primary care IT initiatives to serve our patients, communities, and the primary care providers of the region as well as DFCM faculty and learners. 

Dr. Noah Ivers is the Scientific Lead, a role that will ensure data supports are in place for evidence-informed decision-making, and coordinate the input of DFCM scientists into work done through our partnership with Ontario Health-Toronto Region.  

Dr. Avnish Mehta is the Attachment Lead, a role that will advance the priority area of increasing attachment to primary care across the Toronto region.

Dr. Catherine Yu is the Engagement Lead, a role that will support a coordinated approach to Ontario Health Teams primary care leadership. 

Dr. Ryan Banach

Dr. Banach is a Lecturer at DFCM who has been practicing comprehensive office-based family medicine in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto for 11 years—an experience that has given him insight into the inequality of care patients receive across different neighbourhoods in Toronto. He is an adjunct clinical lecturer at DFCM who has taught both medical students and residents. Dr. Banach is passionate about practice management and frequently delivers presentations to physicians to help them understand better the business side of medicine. He also presents seminars on billing, office efficiency, and career management to Ontario family physicians.

Dr. Rajesh Girdhari

Dr. Girdhari is an Assistant Professor at DFCM who provides primary care and addiction medicine services to people in the Regent Park community as a family physician on the St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team at Sumac Creek Health Centre. He has been a lead for both IT and quality improvement at St. Michael’s Hospital DFCM since 2015. Prior to these roles, he worked as a partner and clinical lead at a health IT start-up company in Toronto. He also has experience working in community emergency rooms and addiction medicine services across the GTA.

Dr. Noah Ivers

Dr. Ivers is an Associate Professor at DFCM and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at U of T. He is a family physician at Women's College Hospital, scientist at Women’s College Research Institute, and innovation fellow at the Women's College Institute for Health System Solutions. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice. His research focuses on the use of data to drive evidence-based, patient-centred improvements in health care. He has conducted multiple pragmatic randomized trials, systematic reviews, and qualitative work on health services and quality improvement interventions.

Dr. Avnish Mehta

Dr. Mehta has had a broad range of practice including in-patient and out-patient, and academic and non-academic. He has had family practices in Ottawa and Toronto. He worked as a hospitalist at Toronto Rehabilitation Centre, Ottawa Heart Institute and Rouge Valley Health System. He also has experience working as a coroner in Ottawa. Dr. Mehta is currently a family physician in Scarborough and is the Medical Lead at the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities. He is also Chief of Family Medicine at the Scarborough Health Network.

Dr. Catherine Yu

Dr. Yu is an Assistant Professor at DFCM and a community and family physician. She is Medical Director of Health Access Thorncliffe Park. An emergency physician for more than 10 years, she is now a passionate advocate for her community patients. In 2019, she received the Ontario College of Family Physicians Award of Excellence for her leadership in supporting vulnerable populations. Dr. Yu is also Chair of the Board of Directors for the East Toronto Family Practice Network, a community of family physicians with a mission to create equitable access to inter-professional care for all family practices.  

We are thrilled to welcome our colleagues to the Office of Health System Partnership, which brings our expertise in academic family medicine and primary care to serve the needs of the health system. We are confident they will build a strong bridge between the university and the health system, which needs primary care leadership and scholarly support now more than ever. Please join us in congratulating them on their new roles.

Visit our new webpage for the Office of Health System Partnership.