Media statement: Abbotsford Regional Hospital HSMR

Fraser Health is aware of Abbotsford Regional Hospital’s HSMR metric and we have initiatives underway aimed to improve our quality outcomes.

Initiatives include focusing on basic care such as hand washing, mobility, mouth care and reducing the number of days a person is on a ventilator, which can have an impact on hospital-acquired infections.

Some of the results we are seeing from these efforts include:

• An improvement in how quickly higher acuity patients who visit our emergency departments move to a hospital bed 
• A 40 per cent reduction in the number of patients who remain in hospital greater than 30 days 
• A 24 per cent reduction in ventilator days between October 2018 and July 2019
• A decrease in the time it takes for hot stroke patients to receive support from 70 minutes to 39 minutes
• C. difficile, MSRA and hand-hygiene rates are all meeting their targets.

While we continue to focus on improving HSMR to provide overall quality outcomes for patients, we are seeing positive results in a number of other areas reported by Canadian Institute for Health Information for 2018/19, where ARHCC has rates lower than the Canadian average in:

• Hospital deaths following major surgery (1.4 per cent at ARHCC versus 1.6 per cent throughout Canada)
• Emergency Department wait times for physician initial assessment (3.6 hours at ARHCC versus 3.9 hours throughout Canada)
• Obstetric Patients Readmitted to Hospital (2 per cent at ARHCC versus 2.2 per cent throughout Canada)