Page 3657 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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Accreditation from the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards indicates to the ACT community that the council believes that ACT Health is striving for best practice, has a quality improvement culture and is committed to quality improvement management systems being in place. It also indicates that the council believes that ACT Health has a focus on patient needs and patient safety. ACT Health was awarded a rating of extensive achievement against 12 mandatory criteria. To be awarded a rating of extensive achievement, an organisation needs to have gone beyond the required level. To achieve this against 12 criteria was an excellent result.
This tells us that ACT Health has nationally recognised healthcare standards, but what about the ACT community? What our community thinks is highlighted in the results of the most recent patient satisfaction survey, provided in July 2007 for the period September 2006 to February 2007. The Canberra Hospital has contracted an independent firm to collect, analyse and report data for the Canberra Hospital patient satisfaction monitor on a six-monthly basis.
In the most recent survey, 444 randomly selected patients were sent a questionnaire and 171 patients participated, a response rate of 39 per cent. This compares with the 40 per cent response rate received by the benchmarked Victorian hospitals. Ninety-four per cent of patients surveyed reported that they were either very or fairly satisfied with their overall hospital experience. This is a two per cent increase from the previous report. Sixty-three per cent of patients were very satisfied and 31 per cent were fairly satisfied with their hospital experience. Sixty-one per cent of respondents felt that they were helped a great deal by their hospital stay, which was an increase of two per cent from the previous report. This means that the ACT government have satisfied patients—patients that are satisfied with their experience in our nationally recognised, quality-focused health service.
Earlier this year the AIHW released data on potentially avoidable hospitalisations. This report records data in relation to hospital admissions for conditions such as whooping cough, influenza, diabetes and the like. The ACT was 36 per cent below the national average for the rate of people with vaccine-preventable conditions admitted to hospitals. The ACT was 39 per cent below the national average rate of admissions for people with chronic conditions admitted to hospitals and 32 per cent below the national average rate for potentially avoided hospitalisations. These low average rates demonstrate the considerable improvements made over recent years to the availability of responsive and effective community services in the ACT and, more importantly, the integration of care between hospital and community services. These figures show that the ACT is already in front of the pack.
But the government is not stopping there. Funding that was included in the last budget was for a program to provide better support to people who have had multiple hospital admissions due to chronic heart and airways disease. This year’s budget builds on this commitment by providing more than $2 million over the next four years. This funding will provide for the referral of patients to appropriate disease management programs, mechanisms to prevent disease regression, and more early detection of chronic diseases. The program is built on the very simple premise that when you fully involve a person in the management of their health you end up with better health outcomes.
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