Whitney Berta, Ph.D.

Whitney Berta is an Associate Professor of Health Services Organization and Management in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation with the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine.

Her research interests are in organizational performance, organizational learning and knowledge transfer with a focus on institutional long-term care and, more recently, the acute and primary health care sectors. She is a Principal and Co-Principal Investigator on several ongoing projects that examine the relationships between aspects of performance in health care organizations and their learning capacity.

Whitney is a Principal Investigator for a project funded by the Primary Health Care Transition Fund (MOHLTC) examining factors influencing information transfer in the primary care sector entitled, "Coordination of Care: Factors that Influence Horizontal and Vertical Information Transfer between Primary Care Practices and Medical Specialists", with Co-Investigators Dr. Jan Barnsley, Dr. Jeff Bloom, Dr. Rhonda Cockerill, Dr. Liisa Jaakkimainen, Dr. Dave Davis, Dr. Yves Talbot, and Dr. Eugene Vayda.

Whitney holds a BSc from the University of British Columbia, and an MBA in Marketing and Strategy at McGill University. In 2000 she acquired her PhD in Organization Theory at the J.L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and joined the Department of HPME. She teaches in the areas of strategic management, health services organization and management theory, and organizational learning and knowledge transfer.

Dr. Berta was involved in the following M-THAC projects as an M-THAC researcher:

• Estimating Operational Efficiencies of Long-Term Care Facilities in Ontario

• Factors Facilitating and Maximizing Learning about Nursing Best Practice Guidelines through the Pilot Project Process

• Learning Capacity in Ontario's Long-Term Care Facilities: A Study of Factors that Affect the Adoption, Transfer, Adaptation and Retention of Clinical Practice Guidelines

Contact Information:
E-Mail: whit.berta@utoronto.ca