Watch above: Saskatoon’s St. Paul’s Hospital is the only health facility in the country to be red flagged over the number of mortalities last year. Meaghan Craig takes a look at the startling statistic and finds out what the health region is doing to change it.
SASKATOON – A new report out on Tuesday on hospital deaths is a damaging one, at least for the Saskatoon Health Region. A total of 83 hospitals across the country were monitored for the number of patient deaths that occur while in their care and the only one above the national average was St. Paul’s Hospital.
According to the data released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the leading causes of hospital deaths in Canadian hospitals include: stroke, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, sepsis or a heart attack.
The results also showed that you might not fare as well if you’re being treated at St. Paul’s Hospital for any of the above.
“St. Paul’s Hospital has the dubious pleasure of being the hospital, the one hospital that is above the national average,” said Kira Leeb, director of health system performance with the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
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CIHI currently reports hospital deaths or hospital standardized mortality ratio (HSMR) from 83 hospitals in the nation. As part of the key highlights from the 2013-14 data, St. Paul’s Hospital was the only one above the baseline average of 100 at 111.
“It is really a flag, it’s an important flag but it is flag to start taking a look at what they need to pay attention to,” explained Leeb.
As for how the rest of the hospitals compared, 64 had an HSMR significantly below 100 and 18 hospitals had an HSMR not significantly different from 100.
Overall, 57 per cent of hospitals across the country have seen a decrease in the number of patients dying in hospital over the last five years. The data compiled is also approximately 80 per cent of all deaths in a hospital setting and excludes patients who are listed as palliative care patients.
“Some hospitals may have higher sepsis rates, some hospitals may have higher rates of heart failure deaths for example and again those are places where hospitals can start looking at their patient care, the quality of care they’re providing those patients and see if there are things they can be doing to prevent those patients from dying,” added Leeb.
Saskatoon Health Region officials say the findings caught them by surprise and corrective actions will be taken.
“We’re concerned we have to look at it and dig in and try understand what might be the causes of that increase so my response is concerned and it’s an indicator to us we need to have a closer look,” said Jean Morrison, CEO and president of St. Paul’s Hospital.
Dr. Cory Neudorf, chief medical health officer for Saskatoon Health Region, said perhaps other health regions could provide insight on how to lower hospital death rates.
“We need to be looking at hospitals across the country that are the leading hospitals in some of these areas and comparing our best practices to what they’re doing,” said Neudorf.
Royal University Hospital, although not different from the national average at this point, is said to be trending in the wrong direction as well according to CIHI experts, with numbers heading up as opposed to going down.
Health region officials say once they’re able to review the data and nail down the issues, changes will be made to improve the hospital death rates at St. Paul’s, but it won’t happen overnight.
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