Dr. Robert Bell is President and CEO of University Health Network (UHN), consisting of Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto General and Toronto Western Hospitals.

An internationally recognized Orthopaedic surgeon, healthcare executive, clinician-scientist, and educator, Dr. Bell brings more than 30 years of experience in academic healthcare to the leadership of Canada’s largest research hospital.

In July of 2000, Dr. Bell was appointed Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of Princess Margaret Hospital. Later that same year, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research awarded Dr. Bell and his colleagues more than six million dollars for five years for their Interdisciplinary Health Research Team Project in Musculoskeletal Neoplasia. From July 2003 to June 2005, Dr. Bell was Chair of the Clinical Council for Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) as well as a Regional Vice President (Toronto) for CCO. In April and May of 2005, Dr. Bell completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Dr. Bell earned a Doctor of Medicine from McGill University in 1975 and a Masters of Science from the University of Toronto in 1981. He completed a Fellowship in Orthopaedic Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University in 1985. During his career as a clinician-scientist at the University of Toronto, he received more than five million dollars in peer-reviewed funding and published more than 170 peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Bell is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

“Why would we create the inefficiencies and inequities associated with private funding, rather than simply leverage the efficient public system?”