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Shift: Conversations on Changing Canadian Health Care
Welcome to Shift! A podcast dedicated to exploring ideas, projects, practices, and policies that are reshaping the future of health care in Canada. Each episode delves into the dynamic world of health care innovation, featuring insightful discussions with leaders, thinkers, policymakers, researchers, and direct care practitioners who are driving change and finding solutions to enhance health and health care.
My mission is to illuminate the challenges and celebrate the ideas that are changing Canadian health care. From ground-breaking technologies and policy reform to grassroots initiatives and patient-centric approaches, we aim to uncover the stories behind the progress. Join me as we navigate the complexities of health care transformation, inspire meaningful conversations, and foster a community committed to improving health outcomes for all Canadians.
Whether you're a health care professional, policymaker, or simply curious about the future of health care, Shift provides the insights and inspiration change makers need to stay informed and engaged.
Episodes
24 episodes
Reimagining Home Care - The Buurtzorg Way
What happens when you stop managing nurses and start trusting them? In this episode, Kyla sits down with Jos de Blok — the Dutch nurse-turned-founder of Buurtzorg, the neighbourhood care organization that rebuilt home nursing in the Netherlands...
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Season 2 Premiere: The Race to Save Medicare from Privatization
To open this new season, Kyla sits down with retired registered nurse and author Cathy MacNeil to talk about her book Dying to Be Seen: The Race to Save Medicare in Canada. Over fifty years in the system — bedside nursing, ICU, hospita...
The Centre Cannot Hold Summer Series Finale: Funding the Crisis, Starving the Solutions
This is the episode where all five flaws converge. When you don't plan your workforce, don't budget for results, follow rules instead of outcomes, and never track data — you end up funding the emergency and starving the prevention, year aft...
The Centre Cannot Hold Summer Series: Little data, less analysis, no follow-up
This episode is about what happens when governments collect data but never act on it, measures inputs but never outcomes, and substitutes the phrase "we are committed to continuous improvement" for an actual plan.
The Centre Cannot Hold Summer Series: The Operation Was a Success but the Patient Died
A domestic violence survivor loses her benefits if she stays with her parents for a tenth month. A person with a disability turns down a job offer because taking it means losing housing support. A senior is denied a taxi voucher to a clinic and...
The Centre Cannot Hold Summer Series: The Budget Was Met, The Problem Wasn't
Every year, government sets a budget for social programs. But almost nobody asks what those numbers are supposed to produce — or checks whether they did. This episode follows Lamrock's team as they ask the Department of Finance some very basic ...
The Centre Cannot Hold Summer Series: Wait Times are a Feature, Not a Bug
In the 1990s, as a response decades of overspending, governments facing fiscal pressure made a deliberate choice: cap enrolments in health professions, reduce training spaces, limit billing numbers. The long wait times that followed weren't an ...
Introducing “The Centre Cannot Hold" Summer Series
This is the episode that sets the stage. In 2024, Kelly Lamrock — New Brunswick's Child, Youth and Seniors' Advocate — released a report that asks a question most of us have been a...
What an Emergency Doctor Wants you to Know about ED Waits
In this episode, Kyla sits down with Dr. Brittany Ellis — an emergency physician with specialized training in geriatric emergency medicine — for a wide-ranging conversation abo...
When Options Evolve: The End of Life Care Conversations We're Not Having
Canada has expanded the legal options available at the end of life — but the conversations with patients and families haven't kept up.In this episode, Kyla talks with Dr. Janine Brown, nurse researcher and PhD at the University of Saskat...
Patient Health Homes: What They Are and Why You Deserve One
In this episode, Kyla sits down with Dr Ginger Ruddy, a family physician and consultant with the Saskatchewan Medical Association, to break down what a patient medical home actually is, why the traditional fee-for-service model is holding us ba...
Beyond the Back of the Ambulance: How Paramedicine is Evolving to Fill Gaps in Care
In this episode, we sit down with Angela Sereda, a senior leader in Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) with Medavie West, to discuss the shift happening i...
An Unlikely Duo Working Together to Address Transportation Challenges for Older Adults
In this episode, we explore an unlikely but powerful partnership between Terry Kostyna, a "get-shit-done" (GSD) entrepreneur and small-town mayor, and
How Failure Demand Keeps Us Stuck with John Mortimer
In this episode, I sit down with John Mortimer, a specialist in systemic service design and founder of
Who’s Missing?: Equity Informed Health and Health Services with Erin Beckwell
Recorded just twenty-four hours before Prairie Harm Reduction (PHR)—formerly known as AIDS Saskatoon—officially closed its doors on April 9, 2026, this episode features a deep dive conversation with social worker and advocate
If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: The Courage to Disrupt the Status Quo with Dan Florizone and Marlene Smadu
In this episode, I sit down with two of Saskatchewan’s most experienced health care leaders, Dan Florizone and
Quarter One Learnings
In this special episode, Kyla pauses her interviews to reflect on the key themes and insights from the first three months of the podcast. Kyla shares what she's gleaned from conversations with Dennis, Andy, Teri, Kath and Steven - distill...
Why $8.5 Billion Won't Fix Saskatchewan's Healthcare System but a Little Imagination Might with Steven Lewis.
In this episode, I sit down with Steven Lewis, a veteran health policy consultant and former CEO of Saskatchewan’s Health Services Utilization and Rese...
Closing the Cracks: A Sister's Quest for a Safer Health Care with Teri Price
In this episode, Kyla sits down with Teri Price, the Executive Director of Greg’s Wings Projects,
The Patient First Paradox: Why Saskatchewan’s 2026 Health Plan Is a Total Let Down
In this episode, Kyla offers a critique of Saskatchewan's newly released "Patient's First Healthcare Plan" and questions why health care systems insist on repeating the same failed approached decade after decade. Drawing on comparisons to...
Reflections on 25 Years of Quality Improvement in Saskatchewan with Dr Katherine Stevenson
In this episode Dr. Katherine Stevenson reflects on 25 years of quality improvement in Saskatchewan — tracing the shift from measurement and reporting toward collaboratives, the Accelerating Excellence strategy, large-scale Lean adoption, and a...
A Three Horizons Conversation with Andy Wilkins
Futurist Andy Wilkins discusses rethinking health as a complex, nested system — from cells to cities — and why current siloed, “repair-shop” healthcare models won’t scale for ageing, multi‑morbidity populations. He explains the Three Horizon...
Relational Service Design with Dennis Vergne
In this episode, Kyla sits down with Dennis Vergne, a systems improvement consultant based in London, to explore the concept of Relational Service Design and why it’s critical for transforming public services. Dennis shares his journey from ...