Sometimes in a busy health care system, it’s easy to get lost in our day-to-day routines. That’s why it’s important to take the time to stop and ask our patients what they think of the care we provide.
Between October 2011 and March 2012, the province surveyed 14, 898 randomly sampled people who had an inpatient stay at any hospitals or rehabilitation centres across BC. The results have been released in the 2012 Acute Care Patient Survey.
Acute Care Patient Survey scores
Our patients were surveyed in all of our acute and rehabilitation locations including Vancouver General Hospital, Lions Gate Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital, GF Strong and more. We received a total of 3,449 responses across VCH, with an overall response rate of 41.9%, making this one of the largest-scale surveys that VCH participated in.
Overall, 93.8% of the patients surveyed reported having a positive experience with us. This score increased by 1.5 % since the survey was last conducted in 2008. VCH also scored statistically significantly better than the BC average of 92.2%. Congratulations!
Where we did well:
- Being courteous
- Working as a team
- Having nurses available when you need them
- Receiving care from doctors
- Providing pain control
Where we can improve:
- Discussing fears and anxieties
- Engaging patients in having enough say about their care
- Ensuring patients and their families felt prepared to go home
- Explaining test results in a way that is easy to understand
Summaries of our results for VCH overall, as well as each Community of Care and facility, are posted on our public website on the Acute Care Surveys page. In addition, you can find the detailed results and one-page summaries for your unit on the Quality Patient Care portal on the VCH Intranet.
What’s next?
We know that patients who have a positive experience while in hospital also tend to have better health outcomes post-discharge. I encourage you to take pride in these results, celebrate them, discuss them with your team, and post them for staff, patients and visitors to see.
The results are also an opportunity to learn from our patients’ feedback and identify opportunities for improvement over the short and long term. Therefore, I encourage you to reflect on them in the context of how they can inform your local quality improvement initiatives. Serena Bertoli-Haley (Accreditation and Patient Satisfaction Leader) is available to help you develop a deeper understanding of the wealth of information in your unit’s report, or answer any questions that you may have about the survey.
Thank you!
The positive patient feedback reflected in these surveys is a direct result of the excellent work of VCH staff and physicians and their commitment to providing the best care. These results show that we truly embrace and live our True North goals. Thank you to everyone who works hard every day to deliver exceptional care in hospitals and the community.
Related links:
Quality Patient Care portal
BC-wide results on Ministry of Health website