Big improvements in its performance in taking care of emergency room patients is paying big dividends for the The North Bay Regional Health Centre.
It has hit a significant milestone with the latest “Pay-for-Result” (P4R) wait-time figures, ranking the hospital in the top 10 in the province for the months of January and February.
"Based on performance, the hospital receives dollars over and above our base funding," Ann Loyst, Director of Medicine told BayToday.
"We received over one million dollars because of our performance last year. It looks like it will be the same this year."
Ontario’s Pay-for-Results program was started to help hospitals in improving emergency room wait times.
Out of the 74 largest hospitals, the hospital ranked 24th in performance in 2013, but improved that to 13th last year, going up 11 spots in the rankings.
Loyst says wait times are measured in three main ways;
- wait times to see a doctor
- wait time for total visit and
- the time it takes to get a bed after a patient is admitted
In addition, the hospital was recently awarded the designation of “one of the provinces’s high performing P4R sites” by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care for sustaining wait time improvements over the years.
“These results speak to great team work between hospital staff, physicians, administration and organizational wide support of improving efficiency and quality of patient care,” says Dr. Erica Buck, Medical Director & Chief of Emergency Medicine, NBRHC.
“The ultimate hospital and community goal is to provide care in the right place, at the right time by the right care provider,” says Eric Bouchard, Manager of the Emergency Department, NBRHC. “Without striving for efficient care in the hospital and Emergency Department, the ED and hospital beds would be overcrowded.”
Evidence supports that ED overcrowding and long wait times lead to more hospital admissions, higher death rates and shorter wait times improve patient satisfaction.
“One of our community’s greatest challenges is a shortage of family doctors /primary care providers,” says Dr. Buck. “The hospital hopes that these latest Pay-For-Results achievements will attract more family physicians as well as family physicians who want to work in the ED to our community.
