Hospital Benchmarking Report April - June Quarter 2008

Patient satisfaction remains at near-record levels across all District Health Boards, according to the Ministry of Health.

Hospital Benchmark Information (HBI) reports are produced quarterly by the Ministry of Health and track the performance of all public hospitals in New Zealand against 15 key performance measures.

The reports help hospitals measure their performance against one another and look for ways to improve, says Principal Medical Advisor Dr David Galler.

Among the performance measures are triage rates (emergency department waiting times), patient satisfaction, average length of stay and acute readmissions.

"The vast majority of patients are clearly satisfied with their encounter with the public health system. Most patients receive excellent care from hardworking health professionals," says Dr Galler.

In the most recent April-June quarter, patient satisfaction rates remained strong at 88.3 percent, down slightly from 88.7 in the last quarter.

Over the three quarters to March 2008, the emergency department triage rate across New Zealand for category one (most urgent) patients was 100 percent. In the June 2008 quarter this dropped slightly to 99.9 percent, due to one patient not being seen immediately by Whanganui DHB. There were 1255 triage category one patients in total during the quarter.

Triage 1 is the most urgent category and DHBs are expected to see 100 percent of patients in this category immediately.

The emergency department triage rate for category two patients continues to show a positive trend, up to 71 percent in the June 2008 quarter, from a low of 54 percent in the September 2004 quarter. The upward trend continues to be driven by improvements at several large hospitals (Auckland City, Christchurch and Middlemore hospitals).

Experts from these hospitals form part of a working group that has been convened by the Ministry of Health to make recommendations to the Minister. Their advice will help improve the service offered to patients by emergency departments across New Zealand, by suggesting new ways of measuring progress and fostering improvements in service quality.

Since March 2007, DHBs have been reporting the number of Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections against the number of bed days in hospital.

The focus on S. aureus infections is because they are one cause of poor outcomes for patients, they usually result from healthcare procedures such as the insertion of catheters and the introduction of the infection through surgery, and they are potentially avoidable.

Both Auckland and Waikato DHBs report S. aureus rates of around three infections per 10,000 patient bed days. These are the highesr reported rates in the country.

"The degree of statistical uncertainty in these figures remains very high, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions about DHB performance at this stage of data collection," says Dr Galler.

The Ministry of Health began measuring patient satisfaction levels in 2000.

For a copy of the reports go to http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/dhb-hospital-benchmark-information-report-aprjun08