Mayo General Hospital is the worst-performing hospital in the State, according to a new Health Service Executive (HSE) league table published today.
The HealthStat programme examined how teaching, regional and general hospitals performed against national and international targets in delivering services to patients. Four of the 29 hospitals surveyed were ranked as “unsatisfactory and requiring urgent attention”.
Mayo General Hospital finished bottom of the table with the HSE saying it requires urgent attention in the three categories surveyed - patient access, integration and resources.
Cork University Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda and University College Hospital Galway also received an overall rating of red meaning they performed unsatisfactorily.
The other 25 hospitals were given an amber rating or “average performance with room for improvement”, while none of the hospitals surveyed received a green rating or “very good performance”.
St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar and Mallow General Hospital were considered the best performing hospitals with a ranking of “average performance”.
At a press conference today Prof Brendan Drumm insisted HealthStat would not be used as a stick to beat under-performing hospitals with. “The idea is to reward good performance and spread good practice. We don’t want to use this forum to beat up on people,” Prof Drumm said.
“This is a new approach based on being totally open and showing where we have problems. . . . We will not set out to hide information because it doesn’t suit us to set out certain facts or figures.”
He conceded, however, that the state of the public finances will pose major challenges in trying to improve the performance of hospitals and health services.
“There is lots of information out there to show that when we’re efficient, we provide a better quality of care. We face enormous challenges, but that can't distract us. We have to continue to focus on improving our efficiency," Prof Drumm said.
He added that the HealthStat programme would be rolled out to all general and speciality hospitals by the end of this year, while community services would be covered by 2010.
The system measures outpatient department wait times, the average length of time patients stay in hospital, GP access to diagnostics and if patients and their families are being informed of their treatment and included in discharge planning.
It also records how well each hospital is using its resources measured by example, absenteeism levels, number of patients seen in out patient clinics and therapy. The system does not measure standards of care.
Today’s data is for the month of January and HealthStat statistics will be made available to the public via the HSE’s website on a monthly basis.
The Irish Patients Association (IPA) today welcomed the publication of the Healthstat index saying by calling it a “good start” and saying it should help indicate the HSE’s performance.
However, chairman of the IPA Stephen McMahon asked: “Why after spending billions of euro on our heath service not one participating hospital gets a green light for each of the domains under review?”