We bring fluency to complexity
Understand.
Innovate.
Get it done.
Understand the system.
Simplify the way in.
Executive advisory for hospitals and provincial health systems, from people who have run them.
We help solution providers understand how health systems actually work, and build partnerships worth keeping.
Tell us your challengeHow we work
Three things, in this order.
Understand
The problem in the room is rarely the problem. We go and look. Front line first, then the data you already have, then the question nobody has thought to ask. Nothing gets recommended before it gets understood.
Innovate
New models of care, new operating structures, new commercial arrangements. Not innovation theatre. Options you can actually staff, fund, and defend at a board table.
Get it done
The part most firms hand back to you with a deck. We stay through implementation, hold the plan to its timeline, and say so out loud when it starts to drift.
Understand
How health systems actually decide. Who holds the budget, who holds the quiet veto, and why a clinically excellent product still stalls somewhere between the pilot and the purchase order.
Simplify
Fewer wrong doors and less guesswork. We shorten the path in, so your effort goes to the opportunities that are real and your team stops selling to people who cannot buy.
Partner
A sale is an event. A partnership renews. We help you build the kind of relationship a health system will defend internally when budgets get tight.
What we do
Where we are usually called in.
We work with CEOs, COOs, CNEs, CMOs, CFOs, and VPs of Strategy at hospitals, health authorities, and ministries.
We work with founders, chief commercial officers, and sales leaders at health technology, medtech, and supply chain companies.
Clinical strategy and model of care
Clinical service planning, capacity and demand modelling, model of care redesign, case costing, and value-based KPI frameworks.
Supply chain and value analysis
Clinically integrated supply chain, built on GS1 standards and GTIN/GLN adoption, point-of-use and RFID capture, and case costing tied to product data. We have set up hospital supply chain programs from the ground up, and we know where the savings actually hide, and where they only appear to.
Operations and flow
Perioperative throughput and emergency department performance are where we are often called first, but the work runs across any department: workforce optimization and human capital management programs among them.
Infrastructure and capital planning
Master programs, functional programming to CSA Z8000, capital business cases, P3 and progressive design-build advisory.
Governance and delivery
PMO design, portfolio governance, and executive reporting that tells leaders what to do rather than only what happened.
Transformation recovery
We understand dumpster fires: how they start, why they spread, and how to get out of one. When an organizational transformation, clinical or non-clinical, has stalled or gone sideways, we are brought in to find out what went wrong, stop the bleeding, and get it back on a path it can finish.
Leadership readiness
The initiative is often bigger than anything the team has run before. We prepare your leaders to walk into a high-stakes, high-value program and hold their own, so the work does not outgrow the people carrying it.
Clinical credibility
Pressure-test your product and your claims against how care is actually delivered, so clinicians recognize themselves in your pitch.
Knowing the buyer
A CFO, a CNE, and a supply chain director are buying three different things from you. We help you say the right one to each.
Commercial structuring
Business cases, pricing and risk-share structures, and proof points that survive a finance review rather than stall in one.
Adoption and market entry
Implementation realism, reference-site strategy, and the Canadian and cross-border market context you need before you commit.
How we report, and how we teach
Does your organization have data, but no direction?
Most health systems are drowning in dashboards and starving for decisions. We help you use your data to steer. Not just what the numbers say, but what they mean and what to do about them. And we do not keep that skill to ourselves. We work alongside your teams so they think, analyze, and report this way long after we have gone.
Data aware
The number is not the point. What it means is. We move teams past reading the dashboard to interrogating it, so a metric becomes a question rather than a verdict.
Strategically guided
Every figure gets tied back to what the organization is actually trying to achieve. Data that does not serve the strategy is noise, and we help teams tell the difference.
Action biased
A finding that changes nothing was not worth finding. We build the reflex of ending every analysis with a decision, so insight turns into movement instead of another slide.
It shows up in how we report. Every deliverable we hand over, and eventually every deliverable yours do, is built to steer with eyes wide open, organized around three questions.
Celebrate
What is actually worth celebrating?
Not every green is a win, and not every win is on the scorecard. We name the few results that move strategy forward, and say why they matter.
Worry
What should keep you up at night?
Not every red is the same. We separate genuine risk from numerical distance to a target, so your finite attention lands where it counts.
Pay attention
So what, what next, what to watch?
Every section closes with what it means, what to do about it, and the signal that will tell you whether you got it right.
Who you get
A senior bench, and nobody learning on your file.
You get people who have held the accountability, not a pyramid of analysts learning your organization at your expense. Every engagement is led by someone who has sat in the chair.
We use AI as a production layer for analysis and drafting. That is not a pitch. It is why a boutique can turn work around in days that a large firm would quote in weeks, and why our fees look the way they do.
We are small on purpose. It keeps the work senior and keeps overhead off your invoice. Every engagement is staffed deliberately: where a problem calls for a costing specialist, an engineer, a data scientist, or a clinician from a subspecialty we do not practise, that person is brought in for the work. You get the bench the problem requires rather than the bench we happen to have, and you are told plainly when the answer is that we are not the right firm at all.
Dr. Alex D. Mitchell
MD, FRCSC, CCPE, CPHIMS-CA · Founder & Chief Executive Officer
An experienced surgeon and former health system executive, Alex is a recognized leader in health system transformation and infrastructure delivery. He has led the planning, procurement, and delivery of major healthcare infrastructure projects for Nova Scotia, including Canada's first closed healthcare Progressive DBFM, setting a national precedent for how large-scale healthcare projects can be planned, procured, and delivered.
His experience spans governance, procurement, supply chain, health technology, and artificial intelligence. Across his career he has spearheaded system-level change, blending clinical insight with strategic and operational execution to help healthcare make sense. Alex has built his career dreaming, developing, and executing great ideas in healthcare. He leads each Translate Health engagement personally.
Selected engagements
Health systems and solution providers that have trusted us with hard problems.
Tools and thinking
The Healthcare Project Escalation Clock
Every month a capital decision sits unmade, the project gets more expensive. This tool puts a number on the delay and lets it run in front of the room. Set the budget, the escalation rate, and the date the decision should have been made.
Tell us your challenge
Describe the problem in your own words.
Tell us where you keep getting stuck.
No form-filling ritual, no discovery call funnel. Write it the way you would say it out loud. Dr. Alex Mitchell reads every one of these personally and answers within two business days.