The Hospital Report project began in 1997 when six researchers affiliated with the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto contributed to the development of a system-wide review of Ontario's hospitals. The result was the first volume in the Hospital Report series which was published in 1998 and reported on inpatient acute-care activities in the province.
The original research team was led by Professor G. Ross Baker, PhD (University of Toronto) and included Geoff Anderson, MD PhD (University of Toronto), Adalsteinn Brown, DPhil (University of Toronto), Ian McKillop, PhD (Wilfrid Laurier University, now at the University of Waterloo), Michael Murray, PhD (University of Toronto) and George H Pink, PhD (University of Toronto, now at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill).
Since the beginning, the Hospital Report series has reported on a basket of measures that, when taken together, provide insights into the overall performance of a hospital. This approach better supports good management and stewardship purposes than many of the narrowly focused performance measurement tools of the past such as report cards. Kaplan and Norton [1992] advocated such an approach when they proposed organisations should develop a "balanced scorecard" of indicators - an approach used by the Hospital Report series to this day.
Funding for the original project was provided by the Ontario Hospital Association. In 2001, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care joined as a sponsor, and the project is supported to this date by a joint partnership between the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
Some of our research is funded by other research grants from organisations such as the Ontario Women's Health Council.
As the project grew, many additional investigators joined the initiative and the Hospital Report Research Collaborative was formed. Overall management of the project continues to be based at the University of Toronto, but today many other organisations play a vital role in sustaining the research and quality improvement initiatives of the collaborative.