Dear editor,
Re: Growing pains: FOI request shows 38 complaints to Island Health in hospital’s first half year of operation (June 7 Record)
Island Health’s response suggests a reticence to provide transparent and accurate information, an attitude of risk complacency, and a tone-deaf spin of patient complaints as a good news story. This raises public accountability concerns.
The Record made a FOI request for copies of the actual complaints which could have been redacted to protect patient confidentiality. Instead, Island Health chose to provide a summary from which it is difficult to discern the seriousness of the complaint and level of health risk involved. For example, a reported serious incident that involved a failure to diagnose and treat a senior due to ageism is not evident. So much for the promised “deep dive” following its March 29 public forum where this and other incidents were reported.
Island Health seems to play it loose with performance measurement. It says the move to the new hospital has gone “exceptionally well for the most part” but how is this determined and what does it actually mean?
Accounts of patient experience suggest predictable and preventable serious situations that were the result of inadequate planning and design that can reasonably be attributed to executive level decisions. Where is the sober reflection and focus on learning from this experience to prevent repeating mistakes?
It also seems to play it loose with facts and compassion.
Island Health says it is “pleased” that the “vast majority” of people were “satisfied” but this is based on a false premise i.e., there is no evidence that those who did not formally complain were satisfied. Not all complaints are reported as was the case for an incident reported at the public forum of patient exposure to human feces in the day surgery washroom that went uncleaned.
Further, it should be known that complaints received are normally indicative of a larger problem.
Instead, Island Health’s response is the statistical and communications equivalent of “we are pleased that your operation was the only incorrect operation out of the 500 we performed today.”
This kind of public communication does a disservice to hospital employees who perform to a much higher standard.
Peggy Stirrett,
Comox