By Trelle Kolojay

Saskatoon’s St. Paul’s hospital has highest death ratio in Canada

Dec 3, 2014 | 6:14 AM

According to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon is on top in the country, but not for a good reason.

Out of 83 Canadian hospitals studied, the data suggests St. Paul’s has the highest in-hospital death rate in the nation.

“Certainly we hope St. Paul’s will take note of it. This is really a measure that is meant to be a flag for people,” Kira Leeb, director of health system performance with the CIHI, said. “These deaths are really deaths that are potentially preventable.”

Jean Morrison, president and CEO of St. Paul’s Hospital calls this data concerning and said they are taking it seriously.

“It’s an indicator for us that … we need to go and have a look and do further analysis of cases to understand what’s going on and what the potential causes are,” Morrison said. 

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The CIHI has been tracking hospital death rates since 2007. They look at 80 per cent of deaths that happen in hospitals, not including palliative deaths, and calculate a baseline of 100. Then, all hospitals are compared to that baseline and given a number below 100 depending on the amount the deaths are decreasing or above 100 if deaths are increasing.

“St. Paul’s is the only hospital in the release this year that has a rate that is over our 100 baseline,” Leeb said, adding St. Paul’s ratio number is the highest in Canada at 111.

In comparison to St. Paul’s 111 designation, Saskatchewan comes in at 88, the Saskatoon Health Region at 96 and the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region at 90. The national average ratio is 85.

In the 2013-2014 data, more than half of Canadian hospitals are seeing a decrease in the number of deaths, so Leeb said St. Paul’s is the exception.

Morrison said this isn’t the first time St. Paul’s has hit that 111 mark. 

“We had about the same rate about four or five years ago and it was coming down, so it was a surprise to see this again,” Morrison said.

Morrison said improvements are being made constantly and some of the data collected is from 2013, before significant enhancements were made, including the implementation of a Safety Alert System, that she believes will bring that rate down. Morrison said patients coming to St. Paul’s shouldn’t be concerned.

Leeb said the six leading causes of death in Canadian hospitals are stroke, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, sepsis and heart attack and deaths from those causes should be paid extra attention at St. Paul’s.

“It would be important to start looking at least at those particular deaths within a hospital to see if the results for those particular patient populations are higher than what they would be expecting,” Leeb said.

Dr. Cory Neudorf, chief medical health officer for the Saskatoon Health Region, said in the immediate future they plan to break down this data further. 

Once they have established if there are patterns, if any of the deaths were preventable and begin comparing certain areas of concern with other hospitals to see if there’s anything they can learn, that’s when Neudorf said there will be long-term recommendations. 

“Anytime a patient dies and it’s unexpected, that’s something that is of concern that we need to review and see if there are changes to the care process or anything related to how we’ve managed the patient that needs to improve,” Neudorf said, adding those reviews take place constantly. 

Leeb said this data is not an indicator of overall quality of care, but collected to help with transparency in Canadian hospitals.

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