Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare sets new quality goals for 2013-2014

Every year, Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare creates a new Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) that focuses on setting safety and quality targets for us to achieve. The provincial government mandates through the Excellent Care for All Act that this plan be created each year.

The 2013-2014 plan commenced on April 1st, and the full details of the plan are available on our website. Throughout the year, the progress and results will be reviewed by our Quality Council and the Quality and Safety Committee of the Board of Directors.

This year’s Quality Improvement Plan is important to all of us at Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare. We are committed to maintaining and improving a culture of quality and safety, and we continue to explore new ways to provide care as we know the importance of meeting our patients’ expectations and improving their hospital experience through the provision of safe, quality care.

In the year ahead, we will be working at strengthening different areas of our organization, including access, effectiveness, integration, being patient centered and safety. We have set specific objectives that we want to meet, including reducing emergency room wait times; unnecessary time spent in the hospitals and unnecessary readmissions, improving compliance in hand hygiene and medication reconciliation at admission/discharge, and our ongoing commitment to decrease hospital-acquired infections, like C. Difficile. The majority of our QIP indicators this year have focused the organization on improvements to the safety of the care we provide and will assist us to improve the quality of care our patients receive and deserve.

Last year’s QIP helped us reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections like C. Difficile to below the provincial rate, avoid patient falls, reduce the number of alternate level of care days and receive above average results in patient satisfaction.

You can follow our progress on our QIP indicators online with our Balanced Scorecard. Those interested can also view the 2012-2013 Quality Improvement Plan’s year end progress report.

For more information on Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare, please visit our website at www.mahc.ca.