Our Patient Safety Statistics Shared Online
The performance figures to be published are:
- patient falls- hospital-acquired pressure injury
- healthcare-associated infection
- hand hygiene rates
- emergency centre waiting times
These statistics will be published on the websites for all UnitingCare Health (UCH) hospitals including The Wesley Hospital, St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital, The Sunshine Coast Private Hospital and St Stephen’s Hospital in Hervey Bay.
Richard Royle, UnitingCare Health Executive Director, said the reporting of patient safety performance helps patients to make informed decisions about their care.
“UnitingCare Health consistently achieves impressive results in patient safety performance when measured against national benchmarks and this is again the case for the latest figures available, July-December 2014,” Mr Royle said.
“At the Wesley Hospital’s Emergency Centre, for example, 100 per cent of the most urgent category one patients (immediately life threatening condition) are seen by a treating doctor in less than two minutes - the national benchmark recommended target; and in the less urgent, category five patients, 99.6 per cent are seen by a doctor in less than 120 minutes, well above the national benchmark rate of 70 per cent.
“As a not-for-profit, church-based organisation, at UnitingCare Health the priority is to provide the best possible level of care to our patients and their families. This publication of data is about openness and transparency to help patients make the best decisions about their care.”
Dr Luis Prado, UnitingCare Health’s Chief Medical Officer, said the not-for-profit hospital group continually reviews its performance to identify where improvements can be made, and has a comprehensive quality and safety program that covers many aspects of patients’ experience.
“To ensure we are delivering the best care for our patients we are working with the medical profession and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare (ACSQHC) to develop quality indicators that will lead to improved outcomes for patients,” Dr Prado said.
“It is important that there is an industry-wide, evidence-based approach to improving quality and safety performance in hospitals across Australia.
“Our hospitals have well developed quality improvement programs targeting falls prevention and pressure injuries and other important clinical outcomes and we work closely with our doctors, clinical staff, patients and their families to involve them in these programs to provide high quality care.
“In addition to making clinical outcomes publicly available, we are also providing information on what each hospital is doing to continue delivering the best possible results for patients, and also what patients can do to help achieve this.”
These five categories are key areas for patient safety in clinical care.
They were chosen as they form part of the key clinical indicators outlined in the National Healthcare Standards developed by the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare.
Publishing this data provides the public with important information on UnitingCare Health’s performance in providing safe and quality healthcare.
To view the performance statistics for each of our hospitals go to the following websites:
- ststephenshospital.com.au/quality-of-care/patient-safety
- sunshinecoasthospital.com.au/quality-of-care/patient-safety
- wesley.com.au/quality-of-care/patient-safety