FSNA - London and District Branch

Canada stacks up well against other countries on some aspects of health care, but patient safety is not one of them. This week, the Canadian Institute for Health Information released an analysis of international data by OECD, also published this week, on how its member countries are doing in terms of quality and access to care as well as other health indicators. CIHI said Canada is in the top 25 per cent of OECD countries, or close to it, on many measures of quality of care such as avoidable hospital admissions for asthma and other chronic conditions. It also does well on five-year breast cancer survival rates — third among member countries — and is above average for colorectal cancer and close to the average on cervical cancer. But CIHI said this country has some of the highest rates among 17 reporting countries of accidental puncture or laceration, as well as of foreign bodies left in during surgical procedures. It also has among the highest rates of obstetrical trauma of 20 countries reporting. The patient safety findings do not come as a complete surprise. In July, the World Health Organization reported that Canada has among the highest rates of health care-associated infections (HCAI) among high-income countries and they are even higher than in a number of developing countries. Despite the encouraging cancer survival statistics, CIHI noted that overall cancer mortality rates remain relatively high in this country. CIHI said this is due primarily to a higher incidence of cancer, in particular of cancers that are difficult to screen for and treat early, such as lung cancer. This is especially true in women — cancer mortality rates for females in Canada are among the highest in the OECD and the highest among G7 countries. The CIHI report, Learning from the Best: Benchmarking Canada’s Health System, can be found at secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/products/learning_from_thebest_en.pdf. An OECD report on Canada’s statistics is at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/13/0/49084244.pdf.