Satisfaction, not guaranteed, but questioned

Hospital launches new online surveys to gauge patient and family experiences

So, how was it for you? Did we leave you satisfied? Is there anything else we could have done to help you?

We all get these sorts of questions every day in our personal life, especially as online shoppers. Every Amazon delivery is followed by an email that asks something similar. Just think how many times a day you are asked to click here to rate the service you just received.

Now, Campbellford Memorial Hospital has joined this wave. It just launched a new online survey system to quickly gather and analyze patient comments about their treatment and the hospital’s aging facilities.

Legally hospitals must survey their patients once a year but the system has been in a state of flux in recent years as one contract ended and no acceptable replacement was found. Instead the hospitals have developed a system that seems to work.

In mid-December I wrote about patient views of Campbellford Memorial between 2017 and 2021. They showed people liked the staff but felt they needed a better facility. Those results were made public after the Toronto Star and the Investigative Journalism Bureau at the University of Toronto waged a lengthy freedom-of-information battle to obtain up to six years’ worth of survey data from more than 50 hospitals and health networks, including Campbellford Memorial.

“The surveys we are using are based on a new set of surveys that has been developed in part by the OHA (Ontario Hospital Association),” explains Peter Mitchell, the hospital’s communications and community relations manager.  “We are able to localize these surveys, however, they are still standardized enough that we can benchmark against other hospitals that are using the same tool.”

Until now, the hospital has been using manual surveys that were labour intensive. “We would call patients and manually go through the survey with them, so it was a much more time consuming process,” Mitchell says. “We then also had to manually input the data into a database. 

“This new systems allows patients, and/or their families, to do the surveys right on their phones and the system automatically correlates the data.  This allows us to see the results much quicker and respond to particular concerns or trends in a timely manner.”

Mitchell says the surveys focus on care satisfaction and whether patients received the care they expected during their time as an in-patient, or in the emergency department.

“Another key element is asking patients whether they felt they were given enough information regarding what to do following their discharge.  Do they understand their condition, follow up needed, medication they need to take, referrals that were given etc..”

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Help for the local health team?

You may have noticed that last Thursday Health Minister Sylvia Jones was in Peterborough to announce the province was going to spend $110 million to create new health teams and support existing ones. She talked about support for teams in Peterborough, Sault Ste. Marie and Kingston and how the money would provide primary care for patients who now don’t have a doctor.

Jones said $90 million will be spent creating new teams and $20 million will go to existing primary care teams for operational costs and supplies.

I asked the ministry’s communications department whether the Trent Hills Family Health Team or others in Northumberland were getting any assistance from that fund. Anna Miller, Senior Communications Advisor, replied that “details of the 78 teams as a result of our government’s historic investment will be available in the next few weeks.”

I assume the ministry actually knows where the money is going but thinks it can get more publicity by slowly identifying the sites, instead of telling us all at once. Will keep you posted.

I could quibble over calling a $110-million investment “historic” in a system where the government spends $81 billion per year, but I guess it is in the sense that they haven’t done it before. Let’s hope we get a “historic” announcement about our new hospital soon.