Cdn. Hospitals Release Mortality Rates For The First Time
Posted November 30, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Three of Ontario’s hospitals, including one in the GTA, made the bottom five in a new report ranking death rates at facilities across the country.
Scarborough General Hospital has the third highest rate of deaths in Canada, and the Toronto area’s highest – according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s (CIHI) study. The highest rate belonged to Grand River Hospital K.W. Health Centre in Kitchener, Ont., while Niagara Health System St. Catharines General in St. Catharines, Ont. came in second. Rounding out the bottom five, Burnaby Hospital in Burnaby, B.C. and Red Deer Regional Hospital in Red Deer, Alta.
It’s the first time hospital mortality rates have been released to the public, and the report included 85 acute care hospitals and 42 health regions in all provinces excluding Quebec. The numbers are supposed to represent how well hospitals avoid preventable deaths. (See rankings below) The number attributed to a hospital doesn’t represent number of deaths, but a score. With the number 100 representing the national average, hospital ranking above 100 means a mortality ratio above the national average, while a score below means a lower mortality rate.
“Hospitals and health care providers are continuously looking for ways to improve quality of care for their patients,” says Graham W. S. Scott, Chair of the Board of Directors of CIHI, in a statement. “The HSMR (hospital standardized mortality ratio) builds on this good work by providing another important tool to better understand in-hospital mortality and identify areas for improvement.”
The highest ranking GTA hospital was the University Health Network, which scored an 87. The University Health Network includes Toronto General, Princess Margaret, and Toronto Western Hospitals.
No Ontario hospitals made the top five (in terms of lowest mortality rates). They are, in order: The Moncton Hospital in Moncton, N.B., Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, Alta., Regina General Hospital in Regina, Sask., Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary, Alta., and Saint John Regional Hospital in Saint John, N.B.
The impetus for releasing these numbers is to improve patient care across the board and allow hospitals to see where they could be making improvements. The Ontario government has already mandated that the facilities must report injuries or death rates for certain procedures on their websites in addition to wait time statistics.
More than 250,000 have died in Canadian hospitals outside Quebec in the last three years.
Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio
(Score of 100 represents the national average, palliative care not included.)
Toronto
North York General: 99
Mt. Sinai Hospital: N/A
St. Michael’s Hospital: 91
Scarborough General Hospital: 135
Scarborough Grace Hospital: 110
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre: 104
Toronto East General Hospital: 104
University Health Network: 87
William Osler Health Centre Etobicoke General Hospital : 98
Humber River Regional Hospitals: N/A
GTA
Credit Valley Health Centre, Mississauga: 102
Richmond Hill: York Central Hospital: 101
Rouge Valley Health System: 106
Newmarket: Southlake Regional Health Centre: 100
Oakville Trafalgar Hospital: 91
Oshawa: Lakeridge Health Centre: 96
Trillium Health Centre, Mississauga: 99
William Osler Health Centre Peel Memorial Hospital: 81
Other Selected Ontario Cities
Barrie: Royal Victoria Hospital: 89
Burlington: Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital: 99
Guelph General Hospital: 91
McMaster Hospital, Hamilton: 88
Niagara Health System St. Catharines: 135
Peterborough Regional Health Care Centre: 109
London Health Sciences Centre: 112
See the full report here (.pdf file)
