CBC gives hospital 'D' grade

The Sunrise Health Centre in Yorkton did not fare well on a report card released as part of CBC's The Fifth Estate last week.

The Yorkton facility was one of only eight in Canada to receive the lowest grade of 'D'.

"I would say we were surprised based upon other indicators we had had," said Sunrise Regional Health Authority Board Chair Lawrence Chomos.

It was only last December when it was announced Sunrise Health Region had among the lowest Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR) rates in the country.

The CIHI report, released Dec 13, studied the number of deaths in hospitals across Canada including all hospitals in the Sunrise Health Region.

CIHI standardized the data it collected adjusting for several factors which may affect in-hospital death rates such as age, sex, diagnoses and admission status.

A mortality ratio of 100 is the Canadian average.

A ratio of less than 100 indicates results better than the national average. The HSMR of 74 for Sunrise Health Region was among the lowest in the country.

So Chomos said the CBC report was unexpected.

Chomos said initially local officials were even unsure of "what indicators they (CBC) had used."

CBC based its assessment on data collected from hospitals by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), a publicly funded, non-profit organization that gathers and analyzes data on Canadian hospital performance. A five-member expert panel advised CBC on the selection and use of the data.

Chomos said the CIHI data is creditable as a source but added the CBC's methodology in actually assigning a grade is still unclear; "how they used the data to come up with that grade."

While there are concerns about how the local hospital was assigned such a low grade in comparison to other hospitals its size, Chomos said the local Board will not be discounting the report either.

"Having said all that we don't want to say it (the CBC report) is fluff." he said, adding "it's another piece of information for us to use."

Chomos said as they look into the details of the process and report they will understand it better, and they will then work to address specific issues which arise.

"We still take this very seriously," he said, adding the CIHI information is public, so it's not like the data being used was not known.

The uniqueness of the CBC report is in assigning a grade after information analysis, said Chomos.

In that regard Chomos said "if the intent of the report is to create discourse," then it has merit, and the local Board and staff will be looking to see "how do we make things better."

Chomos also noted the Yorkton Regional Health Centre and the Sunrise Health District has recently gone through its Accreditation Canada Survey process, and the results showed significant improvement from the same process three years ago.

At a Board meeting in December Suann Laurent, president and CEO of the SHR reported, "we've had a 50 per cent improvement," adding that is an indication of how much work has been done over the last three years "to meet all the criteria of national excellence."

Laurent said of the "1769 criteria to be met" only 10 per cent were "not met in our region."