toh

The Ottawa Hospital is saving more lives by providing patients with a faster route to emergency surgery.

The hospital’s “standardized mortality ratio,” which tracks how frequently patients die unexpectedly, has been declining steadily and is now one of the best in the country. From a high of 87.5 percent in 2012, the ratio now stands at 78 percent.

That means that, compared to two years ago, 400 more patients annually are rescued from strokes, heart attacks, traumatic injuries and other critical conditions from which they would otherwise be expected to die.

The standardized mortality ratio is used to assess how well hospitals rescue patients from life-or-death illnesses or injuries. It’s also used to improve the safety of hospital care.

“Our hospital has made big strides in preventing avoidable deaths in part because patients who need life-saving surgery are getting it much faster than they ever did before,” said Dr. Alan Forster, the hospital’s chief quality and performance officer.

Since January 2013, when a new method of scheduling surgeries was introduced, wait times for urgent procedures have fallen dramatically. Patients who used to wait up to 72 hours for high-priority surgeries are now being sent to the operating room within 24 hours of admission.

As a result of these changes, nine out of 10 patients, of the 120 every week who need emergency surgery, are getting to the operating room faster than even the wait times recommended by the provincial government.

The mortality rate among urgent-surgery patients has dropped over the same period, from 3.9 to three percent, translating to 40 more lives saved annually.

You might also like…