What you don't know can hurt you

The intent of this report is to delineate a Quality of Care Indicator Framework (QCIF) report that would in turn lead to the publication, once the data was obtained, of the first AIMS Hospital Report Card (HRC). [...] To date, hospitals in the provinces of Ontario and BC, have been examined, however, only a few of the hospitals in each of the provinces could actually be identified by name as most of the hospitals refused permission to have their names linked to the reported results. [...] The longer patients have to wait for treatments, the more time they and/or their caregivers miss from work, and the greater the pain, sufferingpatients may endure in addition to the increased risk of death in some cases. [...] Identifying the data collection problems is important to gain insight into what information is currently available, and what issues must be addressed in the future to improve the amount and quality of information available to the public about the performance of their health care system. [...] A request was made to the Hay Group for access to the results of the 17 participating teaching hospitals for the indicators.