Tara Kiran is the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation and Vice-Chair Quality and Innovation at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto. Much of her research has focused on evaluating the impact of Ontario’s primary care reforms on quality of care. For example, her work has tried to understand whether organizing and paying physicians differently makes it more likely for people to get recommended care.
Dr. Kiran has a passion for improving the system she works in. She practices family medicine at the St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team. She led the team’s quality improvement program from 2011 to 2018 including efforts to understand patient experience and engage patients in service design. Under her leadership, the team began to systematically collect and report more than 20 indicators of quality and made significant improvements in a number of areas — for example, it became easier for patients to get a timely appointment and more people started receiving recommended cancer screening. In all her work, Dr. Kiran strives to ensure that everyone is getting the care they need, regardless of their income, gender, race, length of time in Canada, or the community they live in. Recent initiatives include trying to improve care for people facing stigma in society such as those who are dependent on opioid medications and those with Hepatitis C.
Over the years, Dr. Kiran has held a number of local and regional leadership roles including as the Board Chair for her Family Health Team, as the Provincial Clinical Lead for the Ontario Diabetes Strategy, and as a Primary Care Physician Lead for the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network. In 2013, Dr. Kiran received the CIHR Rising Star Award from the Institute for Health Services and Policy Research. In 2015, her article on payment incentives for cancer screening was selected to receive the Outstanding Family Medicine Research Article Award from the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
Dr. Kiran is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. She is a Scientist in MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital and an Adjunct Scientist at ICES.
Please note: Dr. Kiran is not taking any summer students.
