New Brunswick hospitals have made adjustments throughout the pandemic, they are now trying to resume their regular services. How can improvement be part of the way forward?
The 2019 edition of the New Brunswick Health Council’s (NBHC) Hospital patient care experience survey collected information from over 6000 hospital patients in the province. The overwhelming message received was that since the 2016 edition, no improvement was measured for the 16 key indicators of the survey.
“While some individual hospitals in the province were identified with better performance, there are opportunities for each of them to improve on key areas of patient experience and satisfaction,” said Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the NBHC. “We have seen in these results that overall, improvements are not occurring, demonstrating the need for greater emphasis on the factors that support improvement in the planning and delivery of hospital patient care services.”
The 2016 report highlighted a few improvements, yet 3 years later there are no improvements and even some regressions. What happened during this time? And what needs to be done for improvement to occur going forward?
This report of the results of the 2019 edition of the survey highlights the need for the following factors to be put in place to nurture improvement:
- performance targets for patient care experiences;
- a strong accountability structure;
- transparency in public reporting.
“These factors are critical to future health service improvement,” said Robichaud. “Without these factors, we can expect that in future surveys, 1 in 5 New Brunswickers admitted to hospital will still not have a positive experience during their stay.”
With respondents from over 20 hospitals, the survey provides information on 16 key measures related to patient satisfaction, as well as 40 additional indicators of patient experience. The survey includes experiences related to the admission process, communication with nurses and doctors, responsiveness of staff, pain control, cleanliness of their room and bathroom, and their transition from hospital to home. To see the complete results, the NBHC invites New Brunswickers to visit nbhc.ca/hospitals, where results are available for the province, for RHAs and for individual hospitals. An Excel file is also available which includes all 56 indicators from the survey.
The NBHC has been established as an independent organization that measures, monitors and evaluates New Brunswick’s health system performance through a citizen-centred dual mandate of performance measurement and citizen engagement.
NBHC Contact: Nay O’Leary, 506-869-6714 or nay.oleary@nbhc.ca