Eagle Ridge Hospital celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2014 comfortable in the knowledge that it is meeting or exceeding expectations for a medium-sized hospital in B.C. But the new executive director who took over the position this fall says 2015 will be a year of refinement and improvement to meet the needs of a growing population.
"I have only been there three months and I see lots of opportunity at the hospital. We're serving such a large population - over 200,000 people - and the hospital needs to start serving a larger purpose, which is one of my longer term goals," said Lakh Bagri, who was previously with Surrey Memorial Hospital and responsible for critical care renal programs for Fraser Health.
Among his short term goals, however, is to work with his hospital operations management team and health care leadership in the region to find ways to address patient health care needs to reduce the length of their hospital stay. Some of the proposals look at ways of ensuring there are enough physio and occupational therapies to get people up and moving around more quickly and examining diagnostic and pharmacy services to see if they can be expanded to the weekend.
Another area of concern, although outside of his area of responsibility, is the need for more home health care so patients can return home with support and, Bagri said, more residential care beds are also needed to look after the frail and elderly, which would also free up beds for acute care patients.
Increasing the number of general surgeries is also on Bagri's to-do list possibly by opening operating rooms for 24-hours and he said Fraser Health is looking into the feasibility of expanding the emergency ward, which was built for 15,000 but now handles more than 45,000 visits in a year.
"How do we recruit people for those kinds of services," Bagri asked, noting that the market for health care workers, including surgeons, is increasingly competitive.
Over the next year, Bagri also plans to work with the hospital's management team to ensure a constant state of quality improvements. ERH has scored well on a new online tool [Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) website, www.cihi.ca.] that compares health facilities across the country. Eagle Ridge Hospital scored well for the cost of a hospital stay and had the lowest number of surgical patients re-admitted to hospital and the lowest number of deaths following major surgery.
But more could be done, he said. "Together with the hospital operations management team, physicians and local leadership, we will look at indicators once a month and build action plans. [The report card] is available to everybody. It really focuses our energy into things the public is looking at."
By the numbers
No. hospital patient admissions
2012/13 17/day
2013/14 18/day
2014/15* 18/day
No. emergency department admissions
2012/13 127/day
2013/14 131/day
2014/15* 137/day
* year to date/ fiscal period ends March 31, 2015
