We take your safety very seriously at St. Joseph's Health Centre. As our patient, we are committed to providing you with quality health care services. When you come to
St. Joseph's for care, you should not be worried about getting sick with an infection you pick up from our hospital environment.
These types of infections are called "hospital acquired infections" and include some names you may have heard about: C. Difficile or CDAD, MRSA, VRE.
To help reduce the chances of you getting these hospital acquired infections, our health care teams are constantly practicing and following infection prevention and control standards.
Paying close attention to the spread of these infectious diseases is a very important step in understanding where safety issues exist and shows us what we need to do to improve. We post information about our infection rates in accordance with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s new reporting framework for patient safety indictors.
But we also show you how we are doing because
we believe it's the right thing to do.
See how we are performing by clicking one of these links:
Clostridium Difficile Associated Diarrhea (CDAD) Rate
Central Line Infection Rate (CLI)
Hand Hygiene Rate
Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR)
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Rate (MRSA)
Surgical Safety Checklist
Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Prevention Rate
Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus Rate (VRE)
Ventilator Associated Pneumonia Rate (VAP)
Summary of what our Clostridium difficle (also known as C. difficile, C. diff and CDAD) cases in March 2013 means for you:
| New nosocomial cases of CDAD |
CDAD rate per 1000 patient days |
|
|---|---|---|
| March 2013 | 3 | 0.28 |
We report the number of C. difficile cases in the Health Centre on a monthly basis throughout the year.
There were 3 cases of C. difficile in March.
This is a slight increase in the number of C. difficile cases we experienced during the first few months of the year. Our Infection Prevention & Control Committee continues to meet monthly to look at strategies we can put in place to further reduce this number.
One of our corporate initiatives in our 2013-2014 Quality Imporvement Plan continues to be C. difficile.
Please click here to read our plan.
Our organization is committed to providing the safest care to our patients and our health care workers continue to work very hard at reducing C. difficile. There are 3 things that we need to do 100% of the time:
Clean Hands Save Lives - Practice hand hygiene 100% of the time. Our health care teams are practicing the 4 moments of hand hygiene every time we approach a patient. This means washing their hands with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub whenever we are working with patients.
Make patients and families partners in care - we are educating them about the importance of hand hygiene and the extra precautions to take when caring for a loved one with C. difficile.
We are encouraging our patients and their families not to be shy about asking their health care providers if they have washed their hands. Clean hands are Everyone's Business! Click here to learn more about proper hand hygiene.The right drug for the right bug - Practice Antibiotic Stewardship We are making sure we are giving patients the right antibiotic for the right period of time.
As well we have been auditing in depth all of our cleaning practices for the hospital environment and patient equipment, and have made changes to ensure cleaning is consistent, thorough and done with a cleaning product that is registered with Health Canada to kill C. difficile. Enhanced cleaning is being done in our high traffic areas such as the Emergency Department.
The rate is calculated as follows:
|
A full picture of our C. difficile rate:
C. difficile Rate at St. Joseph's Health Centre, Toronto
March 2013 to March 2013
| New nosocomial cases of CDAD |
CDAD rate per 1000 patient days |
|
|---|---|---|
| March 2013 | 3 | 0.28 |
| February 2013 | 2 | 0.21 |
| January 2013 | 2 | 0.18 |
| December 2012 | 4 | 0.4 |
| November 2012 | 3 | 0.3 |
| October 2012 | 1 | 0.1 |
| September 2012 | 8 | 0.82 |
| August 2012 | 3 | 0.31 |
| July 2012 | 15 | 1.54 |
| June 2012 | 11 | 1.12 |
| May 2012 | 6 | 0.60 |
| April 2012 | 3 | 0.30 |
| March 2012 | 10 | 1.00 |
| February 2012 | 10 | 1.00 |
| January 2012 | 5 | 0.49 |
| December 2011 | 4 | 0.42 |
| November 2011 | 3 | 0.30 |
| October 2011 | 4 | 0.39 |
| September 2011 | 5 | 0.51 |
| August 2011 | 1 | 0.1 |
| July 2011 | 7 | 0.74 |
| June 2011 | 3 | 0.33 |
| May 2011 | 2 | 0.2 |
| April 2011 | 5 | 0.5 |
| March 2011 | 9 | 0.92 |
| February 2011 | 11 | 1.20 |
| January 2011 | 18 | 1.74 |
| December 2010 | 8 | 0.84 |
| November 2010 | 5 | 0.53 |
| October 2010 | 3 | 0.31 |
| September 2010 | 4 | 0.43 |
| August 2010 | 6 | 0.66 |
| July 2010 | 6 | 0.64 |
| June 2010 | 4 | 0.44 |
| May 2010 | 5 | 0.52 |
| April 2010 | 9 | 0.97 |
| March 2010 | 12 | 1.25 |
| February 2010 | 12 | 1.36 |
| January 2010 | 7 | 0.70 |
| December 2009 | 7 | 0.73 |
| November 2009 | 8 | 0.85 |
| October 2009 | 7 | 0.75 |
| September 2009 | 3 | 0.34 |
| August 2009 | 2 | 0.23 |
| July 2009 | 5 | 0.55 |
| June 2009 | 6 | 0.65 |
| May 2009 | 13 | 1.36 |
| April 2009 | 4 | 0.42 |
| March 2009 | 10 | 1.00 |
| February 2009 | 6 | 0.66 |
For further information please see Answering Your questions about CDAD.
Page last updated: April 30, 2013
