By Courtney Markewich

New website shows RQHR has high patient readmittance, long ER waits

Sep 20, 2014 | 1:20 PM

Data posted about the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region (RQHR) on a new website hasn't surprised the region itself, but its CEO says the information can be used to help the region improve how it serves its patients.

On Thursday, the website called Your Health System launched. It provides data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information and lets people see how their provinces, health regions and hospitals are doing.

“The information has been used for a number of years,” said RQHR President and CEO Keith Dewar. The true benefit, Dewar says, is letting the public see the information as well.

There are benefits for health regions as well.

“What it really does tell us, with the trends you might see, is who really is doing a good job.”

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Dewar said it's then easy to direct health professionals in RQHR to learn from those jurisdictions achieving the top results.

Because the information is broken down to the hospital level, Dewar says it can remind the region about variation within it. He pointed out that other agencies, and even municipalities themselves, should pay attention to some of the social information given to determine how their roles can be improved.

Some areas need improvement

While the website helps identify who is doing the best job with patient care, it also shows areas that can be improved at each level. One such area for RQHR is the rate of patients being readmitted. RQHR sees 9.3 per cent of its patients readmitted while the Canadian average is 8.8 per cent.

“It's been a bit of a challenge for us to address that,” Dewar admitted. “It is one thing we're working on.”

Dewar pointed out this is an area they could look for help in, seeing what successful jurisdictions are doing that RQHR isn't.

The site also shows some health regions' emergency wait times to see a doctor; RQHR is listed as 4.3 hours. Canada's national average is 3.2 hours; patients in the Saskatoon Health Region average 2.4 hours. 

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