The Québec Ombudsman received a report about the safety and quality of care at Hôpital de Sept-Îles. This hospital reports to Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de la Côte-Nord. The Québec Ombudsman decided to intervene with the CISSS.
The report described shortcomings in the quality and safety of care at the Hôpital de Sept-Îles emergency room. The Québec Ombudsman investigated to determine whether service users’ rights had been upheld.
Intervention
The Québec Ombudsman observed several deviations from prescribed service and care quality standards. For example:
- At triage, the average duration of and wait times for assessment or re-assessment were too long.
- Supervision was inadequate. Some of the chairs in the waiting room were out of the security cameras’ range. Emergency room stretchers could not be seen from the nurses’ station. Other stretchers had no call bell. In the isolation room, supervision frequency and documenting were insufficient.
- The average emergency room stay exceeded the target by a wide margin.
Recommendations
During its investigation, the Québec Ombudsman saw a genuine desire to improve the situation and the quality of care. In fact, the CISSS had already begun to make changes in that respect.
The Québec Ombudsman made eleven recommendations to the CISSS to support its process of improvement. The CISSS accepted all of them and the Québec Ombudsman will keep a close eye on their implementation.
English summary of the intervention report concerning Hôpital de Sept-Îles (PDF, 198 KiB)
