Toronto hospital wins 2007 quality award
Tuesday October 16, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
For reducing the length of time a patient with lung cancer waits for treatment as part of its Time to Treat program, Toronto East General Hospital (TEGH) has been named the winner of the 2007 rL Solutions Canadian Healthcare Excellence in Quality Award (CHEQA).

One of five finalists for the award, which was presented Oct. 12 at the Halifax 7 healthcare safety symposium, TEGH was voted the winner by Quality Healthcare Network (QHN) members.

The awards are a joint initiative between rL Solutions, a company that develops software for healthcare organizations, and QHN.

“We’re very excited,” says Marla Fryers, vice president of programs and chief nursing officer at TEGH, a Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) subscriber. “Quality is one of the major strategic directions for our organization.”

For winning, TEGH has received $15,000 which Fryers (who was interviewed prior to Oct. 12) hopes will be re-invested in further quality improvement initiatives.

“We’ve been working hard on quality and safety initiatives within the organization for a number of years so this project is just a reflection of the ongoing work and the various clinical teams that are engaged in quality work and really improving processes for our patients,” Fryers says.

When deciding what clinical area to focus on with the Time to Treat program, Fryers says lung cancer was chosen because it is among the leading causes of death for men and women in Ontario.

“What we wanted to ensure through this project was rapid access to care,” Fryers explains. “From the time of suspicion to the time of treatment, we wanted to decrease and improve that cycle.”

According to information on the CHEQA site, the Time to Treat project had multiple aims:

• To minimize delays in investigation, diagnosis and treatment of patients with suspicious clinical or imaging suggestive of lung cancer
• To improve referral process from primary care physician to community and teaching hospitals for patients with suspected or confirmed lung cancer
• To promote a multidisciplinary tumor review board to establish the best appropriate care for patients with diagnosis of lung cancer

Overall time from suspicious X-ray to diagnosis was reduced from 127.8 days to 30.8 days, a 71 per cent reduction. The majority of physicians (from 70 to 100 per cent) rated the treatment processes as better or significantly better as a result of the system redesign.

Fryers says the system redesign put in place at TEGH could be replicated in other organizations.

“The clinicians have been out presenting what we’ve done to a variety of different groups,” she says, adding a number of hospitals in Toronto are considering how the Time to Treat program might fit their hospital.

Internally, Fryers says the Time to Treat program also carries a lot of potential for future quality improvements.

“At the moment, we’re just beginning to move this process over to breast,” she says. “We’re looking at other clinical areas where this methodology might be transferable.”

For more details on the Time to Treat project, click here.