From the beginning of our lives to the end, Canadians place great trust in our hospitals – and a great deal of money. Canada’s hospital budget is a staggering 56 billion dollars a year, most of it spent on acute care hospitals. But what do we really know about the quality of care we get for all that money?
the fifth estate set out on a nine-month quest to uncover data about Canadian hospitals’ performance and make it public. The result is a Canadian first: Rate My Hospital gives you unprecedented access to information about hospitals across the country, and the opportunity to go online to rate and compare your own local hospital.
Beginning Monday, April 8, and continuing all week on CBC News, national and regional news stories roll out across the country on CBC Television, CBC News Network, CBC Radio and CBCNews.ca, while the Rate My Hospital website—cbcnews.ca/
Unlike the United States and the U.K., Canada remains one of the few developed countries that has kept basic information on how well hospitals care for you largely hidden from public view. With expert input, advanced statistical analysis and in-depth surveys of patients, nurses and hospital CEOs, the fifth estate gives Canadians never-before-available information on the best and worst aspects of hospitals in the country – and reveals what they don’t want you to know.
The climax of the week-long series is on Friday, April 12 at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT) on CBC-TV, with a special show hosted by the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown. It will cover stories from across the country, including:
- Emergency wait times: the fifth estate’s Mark Kelley goes to Alberta to see if an app can help reduce long waits in the ER.
- Hospital-acquired infections: Mark Kelley learns there is no national monitoring system to track superbug infection rates in hospitals, and that can have dire consequences.
- Cause of death: Linden MacIntyre looks into how much we really know about how patients die in hospitals, and why.
- Nurses Survey: More than 4,500 nurses responded when we asked them what they thought about the hospitals where they work, and these are some of their stories.
- CEO survey: The intriguing story of a stand out hospital CEO who will go to almost any lengths to promote accountability.
