By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: April.6, 2012.
The Squamish General Hospital performed “average” on some critical health areas of health in one of the most comprehensive hospital measurement surveys done in Canada by the Canadian Institute of Health Information.
On Wednesday, April.4th, CIHI launched an interactive tool that would make it easy for the public to measure and compare efficiency, safety, and patient care at 600 hospitals across the country.
The report compared hospitals across the country on several key areas, including mortality rates after heart attacks, and readmissions after stroke and heart rate.
In 2010, at 14.68 per cent, the Squamish General Hospital didn’t do particularly well in readmission after a heart stroke, coming well below the Canadian average of 11.30.
(The lower rates are better.)
In 2010, however, it improved its score (11.79), which was still a notch below the Canadian average of 10.79.
Squamish hospital fared quite poorly on another indicator: the rate of in-hospital deaths occurring within 30 days after the first stroke.
It scored 15.84 on that index, while the Canadian average was much better at 7.60.
In an interview with the Vancouver Sun earlier this week, Trudi Beutel, the spokesperson of the Vancouver Coastal Health, said the CIHI reports are valuable.
“We take CIHI’s reports very seriously. They help us improve care – quality of care and patient outcome,” Beutel told the Sun.
The Ministry of Health spokesperson, Ryan Jab, said CIHI will use the information “as a road map” for future hospital improvements.
“Patients should not be concerned about the treatment they receive at any hospital in British Columbia. While some facilities are performing worse than the Canadian average in some areas, the rates are still good,” Jabs told the Sun.
