The team behind the care

Ossama Zaqqout is a Registered Nurse with the College of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CRNA) and the General Manager and Executive Director of Care at Alberta Maple Care. Known to colleagues as Sam, he has spent more than 20 years in healthcare, and the through-line across all of it has been the same question: is the care people are actually receiving as good as the care we say we’re providing?

He began at the bedside, trauma care, ICU, and in pediatric oncology and intensive care, as part of the founding team of a new pediatric oncology department. He went on to complete a Master of Science in Clinical Nursing specializing in critical care, and spent several years alongside other roles as a clinical instructor teaching student nurses.

From there his work moved into some of the most demanding care environments in the world. As a Senior Health Field Officer with the International Committee of the Red Cross, he led the health response during a major refugee crisis, supervising more than twenty-five clinical staff across primary care, trauma, and rehabilitation. He later established an emergency health program in Libya with the International Rescue Committee, and directed emergency health operations across five countries as Head of the Global Response Unit at the SAMS Foundation in Washington, DC.

Ossama holds a Master of Public Health in Global Health from Harvard University, where he was named a Harvard Presidential Scholar and worked as a visiting scientist with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He has since completed further certification at Harvard Medical School in healthcare transformation and digital health, and is credentialed in infection prevention and control through the Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology.

Before founding Alberta Maple Care, he served with the Government of Alberta across policy, regulation, and compliance. As Manager of Operational Policy and Reporting, he was closely involved in the operational policy work behind Alberta’s Continuing Care Act and its regulations — the legislation that has governed home and community care in this province since 2024 — developing the policies, standard operating procedures, and inspection processes used to put the new framework into practice. He also served as an Infection Prevention and Control Advisor to Alberta Health and as an Executive Officer under the Public Health Act, and ultimately as Director of the province’s Home and Community Care Compliance Program, where he built Alberta’s first integrated inspection program for home and community care — the framework used to monitor the quality and safety of care delivered to more than 250,000 Albertans in their own homes.

That experience is the reason this agency exists. Ossama has read the inspection findings. He knows where home care goes wrong: care plans never properly assessed, documentation written after the fact, staff placed in homes without the competencies the situation required, and families who discover a problem only once it has become a crisis. Alberta Maple Care was built to close those gaps deliberately — real clinical oversight behind every care plan, caregivers hired against defined competencies and supervised once they are working, and records kept properly.

He has also taught healthcare leadership and emergency preparedness at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and speaks English and Arabic.

He remains directly involved in client intake and care planning. Families arranging home care are usually in the middle of something difficult — a hospital discharge, a new diagnosis, a parent no longer safe alone — and he believes they deserve someone who will tell them the truth about their options, including when home care is not the right answer.

Ali Mohammed is a Co-Founder of Alberta Maple Care and its Executive Director of Corporate Services: the logistics, supply chain, and finance that sit behind the care. He is a Supply Chain Management Professional (SCMP) and a Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM), and holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance from the University of Guelma. Across fifteen years his work has moved from operations and financial analysis into procurement.

Most of that career was spent in procurement and logistics in Calgary. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation he planned inventory ahead of busy periods and built a better way to track and reduce courier and transportation costs. At Halliburton, BCG General Contracting, and ExxonMobil he ran the full procurement cycle — sourcing, contract negotiation, vendor management, and keeping invoices and payments in order. Since 2020 he has led procurement, budgeting, and supply chain risk management for a group of Calgary health businesses.

For families, corporate services is the part of home care you should never have to think about. Ali’s job is to make sure the supplies and equipment a care plan calls for are sourced properly and arrive when expected, that suppliers and contracts are managed carefully, and that invoices are accurate and easy to understand. He speaks English and Arabic.