QUEEN'S PARK -- Patient safety in Ontario hospitals can be improved, according to the province’s Auditor General, by sharing information between hospitals and complying with safety practices and standards.
Bonnie Lysyk’s report found that of the one million people discharged from Ontario hospitals every year “about 67,000 people were harmed during their hospital stay” — which is the second highest patient harm rate in the country.
This included so-called “never events” such as performing surgery on the wrong body part or wrong patient, a “foreign object” left in a patient after a surgery, and patient suicides despite being placed under suicide-prevention watch.
The report also found that nurses who had been fired for a lack of competence or inappropriate conduct often found work at another hospital or agency, including one nurse who had been fired from two hospitals and banned from another over a three-year period.
Lysyk’s report also found hospital staff may not be washing their hands as frequently as reported, increasing the threat of hospital-acquired infections such as C. difficile which can commonly be spread through the hands of healthcare workers.
Lysyk concluded the province’s 141 public hospitals must “do more to improve patient safety” and share information about staff with poor performance track records.
