New online resource from Canadian Institute for Health Information shows hospital performance improving

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has released a new online resource (www.cihi.ca) that looks at clinical and financial performance in acute care hospitals in Canada.  Comparisons of 2010 and 2007 data shows that hospitals saw fewer deaths after major surgery, heart attack and stroke; fewer readmissions after heart attack, stroke, and hip and knee surgery; and fewer cases of in-hospital hip fracture in 2010 than in 2007. This resource, a part of the Canadian Hospital Reporting Project at the CIHI, provides a series of 21 clinical indicators (with risk-adjusted rates) and 9 financial indicators that allows hospitals to compare their performance against those of their peers. Hospitals were assigned to peer groups so that large hospitals can be compared with large, and small ones with small. This enables meaningful peer comparisons for quality improvement. However, measures of performance on selected clinical indicators across all hospitals show that there are hospitals from each of the peer groups that performed in the top 25th percentile for indicators such as mortality following acute myocardial infarction, mortality following major surgery and readmission after hip replacement.

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