Abstract

In 2012, publicly released reports indicated that the health outcomes at St. Joseph's Health Centre, Toronto (SJHC), may not be of the same quality when compared with those at peer hospitals. This surprised the leaders within the organization given that SJHC had a sound reputation for quality and patient safety within the sector. As a result, SJHC's senior management and medical leadership identified clinical outcomes and data quality as items to be addressed within its enterprise risk management framework with a focus on the methods by which data were collected, coded and used by clinicians. The following article describes the approach SJHC used to improve the quality of its clinical data and how it changed physician participation in examining data designed to help inform and improve care.