Squamish General Hospital (SGH) received a B grade this week in a nationwide hospital ranking survey based on five key indicators of hospital performance.
SGH, one of 600 hospitals graded in a survey for the CBC News program The Fifth Estate, was one of two hospitals in the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) region to have received a B grade, the other being Richmond Hospital, in rankings released on Wednesday (April 10).
Some large VCH-run facilities fared poorly in the survey, with Vancouver General Hospital having received a D grade.
SGH, which has just 21 acute-care beds, was ranked alongside others that fell into the small community hospitals category, one of four categories included in the rankings.
The panel of experts graded hospitals on five measures of patient outcomes based on data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), CBC reported. Those included mortality after major surgery, nursing-sensitive events for surgical patients, nursing-sensitive events for medical patients, readmission after surgery and readmission after medical treatment.
For SGH, the survey includes no grade on the first two indicators apparently because of a lack of available information. It scored a D under the nursing-sensitive events for medical patients indicator, but an A+ for readmission after surgery and a B for readmission after medical treatment.
States the online summary of SGH's performance, Data reported by this hospital shows it gets about the same results overall as the average small hospital.
VCH spokesperson Anna Marie D'Angelo on Thursday (April 11) said that while health authority officials agree that SGH is an excellent hospital that serves a vital function in the community, they're concerned that the limited scope of the data used to grade hospitals provides a misleading picture of their overall performance.
She said VCH officials regularly monitor patient outcomes and conduct patient surveys to ensure that patients receive the best possible care.
Richmond and Squamish scored very well [in the rankings] and they don't need those rankings to know that they provide excellent care, she said.
However, D'Angelo said VCH officials believe the grades are skewed by the fact that data from only five of the 21 categories of information provided by CIHI was used.
We feel the CBC ranking is very subjective, she said. They took five key indicators, and they didn't include some very important ones such as hospital mortality, in which VGH has one of the lowest rates in the country.
If you're going to look at CIHI data, you should look at all the data, not just a few indicators.
David Ostrow, VCH president and CEO, said in a statement issued on Tuesday, While we certainly face challenges in providing care and there are always areas for improvement, I am concerned that subjective surveys such as this one may lead people to think the quality and safety of care at their local hospital is unsafe. Such concerns are absolutely unfounded.
A member of the SGH medical team, speaking on condition of anonymity because of VCH staff confidentiality rules, said the level of patient care and personalized service given are generally high.
Naturally, there's always room for improvement, but I have very little negative to say about the place, the person told The Chief.
VGH gives excellent care but it tends to be less personal, but [at SGH] you're as likely to know the person you're dealing with as not. Generally we know someone who is on the ward, every week. I find that the care that they give here is more personal just because we tend to know the patients.
I would say [SGH] probably does pretty well in client satisfaction.
An online CBC citizens' Rate My Hospital survey seemed to support that view. Asked to rate their experience at SGH based on five categories respect, communication, timeliness, cleanliness and would recommend the 23 people who had responded as of Friday (April 12) afternoon gave SGH a rating of between 4.0 and 4.5 stars out of a possible five in each of the five areas.
For information about the survey, visit www.cbc.ca/news/health/features/ratemyhospital
