Media Release

June 10, 2009

ATTN: NEWS / HEALTH EDITORS

Trillium Health Centre accepts Ontario Health Quality Council challenge to improve wait times for urgent cancer surgery

Mississauga-West Toronto (June 10, 2009).  Trillium Health Centre has accepted a challenge issued yesterday by the Ontario Health Quality Council (OHQC) and is committing to improving wait time compliance for urgent cancer surgeries to 95 per cent by March 2010.

“Trillium Health Centre supports the Ontario Health Quality Council’s call for better compliance on wait times for urgent cancer surgeries,” said Janet Davidson, O.C., President and CEO of Trillium Health Centre. “We are committed to reducing wait times and providing timely access to quality care for our patients.”

In releasing its fourth annual report, the Ontario Health Quality Council commended ‘significant improvements’ in wait times for several types of surgery across the province, but expressed concern that some cancer patients are waiting too long for urgent surgery.

In a news release accompanying the report, the OHQC stated:

Patients needing cancer surgery are prioritized into four categories according to the urgency of their need. This ranges from Priority 1, which calls for “immediate surgery” to Priority 4 where the target is 12 weeks. The OHQC report shows that in Priority 2 or the “urgent surgery” category, half of patients did not get their surgery within the medically acceptable two-week timeframe, including some who waited twice as long.

“We strongly encourage all hospitals that do urgent cancer surgery to take a close look at their numbers and commit to aggressive targets to bring down their wait times to match the best in the province,” said Dr. Ben Chan, CEO of OHQC. 

"Trillium Health Centre commits to increasing compliance for priority 2 and priority 3 cancer surgeries from our current levels of 73% and 83% (respectively) to 95% by March 2010,” said Davidson. “We welcome other CEOs to join in this challenge to improve wait times for patients waiting for cancer surgery.”

Trillium will continue its ongoing efforts to improve coordination of operating room resources and by working with surgeons and surgical teams to complete urgent (priority 2) and medium urgency (priority 3) surgical cases within the prescribed 14 and 28 day targets.  This will be done through continuous improvement of internal processes and communications 

About Trillium Health Centre
Trillium Health Centre is one of Canada’s largest academically-affiliated tertiary care hospitals with highly-specialized regional programs in advanced cardiac, vascular, stroke, neurosciences, orthopaedic, and sexual assault/domestic violence services. Housing a model ambulatory care centre and the largest free standing day surgery centre in North America, Trillium serves over one million residents in Peel and West Toronto and from other communities across Ontario. Last year Trillium’s doctors, staff and volunteers cared for more than 700,000 patients at the Mississauga (100 Queensway W.) and West Toronto (150 Sherway Dr.) locations. With the continued support of the Trillium Health Centre Foundation, the hospital’s fundraising arm, the two-site facility is attracting international attention for its innovative approach to providing safe, high quality health care services and has received numerous national awards for quality and innovation.

For more information, go to www.trilliumhealthcentre.org.

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Media Contact:

Larry Roberts
Media Relations Consultant
Trillium Health Centre
Office: 905-848-7580 ext. 3832
Mobile: 416-358-7201
lroberts@thc.on.ca

Media Contacts

For all media enquiries, please call Public Relations at 905-848-7580 ext. 3832.