Page 2922 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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Hospital until July 2008. This long-term commitment commenced in 2006, with a series of surveys since that time.
I am delighted to say that the latest report, the wave 3 report, which analysed data collected between September 2006 and February 2007, found that 63 per cent of patients reported that they were very satisfied and a further 31 per cent reported that they were fairly satisfied with the level of service and care provided at the Canberra Hospital. That is a massive 94 per cent of patients who responded that they were very satisfied or fairly satisfied with all aspects of their stay at the Canberra Hospital. This is an excellent result for the nurses and doctors at the Canberra Hospital. We should pass on to them our congratulations on the very strong result that they have achieved for their hospital areas.
In specific areas, the Canberra Hospital performed well, including in areas such as respect of cultural and religious needs, at 97 per cent; personal safety, at 96 per cent; courtesy of nurses, at 95 per cent; being treated with respect, at 95 per cent; courtesy of doctors, at 95 per cent; helpfulness of staff in general, at 95 per cent; help received for pain, at 93 per cent; cleanliness of the room in which the patient spent time, at 93 per cent; responsiveness of nurses, at 91 per cent; opportunity to ask questions about treatment, at 90 per cent; and willingness of staff to listen, at 90 per cent. This is a strong result for our public hospital system.
This is a standardised questionnaire. The same methodology and questions are used in successive surveys. Adult inpatients who are treated and discharged from the Canberra Hospital are randomly selected and mailed a questionnaire within two to six weeks of discharge. It is interesting to note that respondents were more likely to be female and to have had an emergency admission. The highest percentage of respondents, at 39 per cent, were people in the age group 65 years and older. This particular age group is a significant proportion of users of our public hospital system.
The main areas for improvement in the previous surveys undertaken included things such as communication between doctors, nurses and other hospital staff about treatment; preparing patients for discharge; and the way hospital routine and procedures are explained. It is very pleasing to note that the most recent survey, as a result of those areas being identified in previous surveys, indicated that patient satisfaction has increased in those areas.
This is valuable information. The results of these reports will continue to be trended over time and will enable us to compare the performance of our hospital with similar large urban and regional Victorian public hospitals. We participate in a broad pool of hospitals that undertake this survey.
What is really pleasing is that overall the results show in hard data form the level of community satisfaction with our public hospital system. In any large system that deals with over 300,000 occasions of outpatient care per year, another 70,000 or so occasions of inpatient care and another 100,000 or so occasions of emergency care, you will never get 100 per cent satisfaction, nor will things go right 100 per cent of the time. But what is very pleasing about this data is that it highlights that we are
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