NONE OF the State’s 29 main hospitals in the State achieved a “good” rating under a new tool aimed at measuring the performance of health services.
The Health Service Executive’s “HealthStat” programme, which was launched yesterday, aims to provide a snapshot of health services by measuring performance in areas such as waiting times for operations and quality of care.
However, in the first assessment of health services using the tool, no hospital received an overall rating of green, indicating a “good performance”.
A total of 26 received an amber rating, indicating an “average performance” against national targets, while four were ranked as red, or “unsatisfactory and requiring urgent attention”.
Mayo General Hospital finished bottom of the table, with concerns flagged across areas such as patient access, integration of services and efficient use of resources.
Cork University Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda and University College Hospital Galway also received an overall rating of red.
The other 25 hospitals were given an amber rating or “average performance with room for improvement”, while none of the hospitals surveyed received a green rating or “very good performance”.
The best performing hospitals were St Vincent’s University Hospital, Elm Park, Mallow General Hospital and the Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar, which all received an amber rating, indicating “average performance” against the national target.
Speaking at a press conference to launch HealthStat yesterday, Prof Brendan Drumm insisted its main purpose was not to name and shame weaker hospitals.
“The idea is to reward good performance and spread good practice. We don’t want to use this forum to beat up on people,” Prof Drumm said.
“This is a new approach based on being totally open and showing where we have problems . . . We will not set out to hide information because it doesn’t suit us to set out certain facts or figures.”
He conceded, however, that the state of the public finances will pose a major challenges in trying to improve the performance of hospitals and health services.
“There is lots of information out there to show that when we’re efficient, we provide a better quality of care. We face enormous challenges, but that can’t distract us. We have to continue to focus on improving our efficiency,” Prof Drumm said.
He also insisted the measures would not be a box-ticking exercise and that patient outcomes, rather than just hospital activity, would be at the core of the way hospitals are measured.
The 22 indicators include outpatient department waiting times, the average length of time patients stay in hospital, GP access to diagnostics and if patients and their families are being informed of their treatment and included in discharge planning.
It also records how well each hospital is using its resources through, for example, absenteeism levels and the number of patients seen in outpatient clinics.
Each month the HealthStat results will be discussed at a forum meeting led by the HSE’s chief executive, hospital chiefs and clinical directors.
Maureen Lynott, the chair of the monthly forum meetings and an adviser to Prof Drumm, said these measurement tools are a powerful way of solving problems in health services in other countries.
HSE chiefs hope to roll the HealthStat programme out to all general and speciality hospitals by the end of this year, while community services will due to be covered by 2010.
Data released yesterday for the month of January is available to the public through the HSE’s website on a monthly basis. To access HealthStat results, visit: www.hse.ie/eng/Healthstat/hospitals/
