PETERBOROUGH REGIONAL HEALTH CENTRE
COMMUNITY REPORT 2021 – 2022
This last year at Peterborough Regional Health Centre has been defined by a number of major achievements amidst significant challenges. While the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to have an impact on the way we do our work, PRHC and hospitals across Ontario are now experiencing a return to pre-pandemic patient volumes, higherthan-usual patient acuity and ongoing health human resource challenges – issues that pre-date the pandemic but have been exacerbated by its widespread effects on the healthcare system. PRHC’s leadership team, physicians and staff have remained poised and ready to adapt and innovate over this last year, ensuring that we have continued to provide high-quality care while keeping our patients, visitors and healthcare workers safe. This dedication to patient care and support across the organization is perhaps best reflected in PRHC’s achievement of Accreditation with Exemplary Standing earlier this year – this is the highest-possible designation by Accreditation Canada, awarded to organizations that go above and beyond, demonstrating excellence in quality improvement. This would be a remarkable achievement in normal times; it is an extraordinary achievement given the challenges we are currently facing.
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In December 2021, PRHC and its six partner hospital organizations – representing 14 hospitals across the central east region of Ontario – launched the Epic digital clinical information system – a major milestone after a decade of planning and preparation. Epic provides a single, unified personal health record for each patient, transforming the way care will be provided to patients and their families for generations to come. In February 2022, PRHC added a new, second MRI machine to our Diagnostic Imaging department, allowing us to perform as many as 5000 additional MRI procedures each year. Demand for MRI scanning has increased by 53 per cent over the last four years at PRHC, and the addition of a second machine will improve access to care closer to home, dramatically reduce patient wait times, and offer modern, leading-edge MRI technology for our patients. Our thanks to the PRHC Foundation for their continued support in bringing a second MRI to PRHC. Further to these three milestone achievements, PRHC has continued to move other major initiatives forward, including our Master Planning process, which looks ahead to the next two decades of our ongoing evolution as an organization. As a regional hospital, PRHC is already bursting at the seams, with patient volumes at or above 100 per cent of our capacity at any given time, and we know that significant growth and expansion will be needed in the years and decades ahead.
As we work with our partners to plan for the future of healthcare in the community and region, one key principle will remain at the forefront of our conversations and decisions: keeping patients and their families at the centre of everything we do. We would like to acknowledge and thank our leaders, healthcare professionals, staff and volunteers; the PRHC Foundation and through them, our generous donors; our partners in the community and region, and our patients and their families for your ongoing insights, collaboration and support. Thank you as well to our community for the incredible support you have shown and continue to show during these extraordinary and challenging times.
Louis O’Brien
Chair, Board of Directors
Robert Gibson
Vice Chair, Board of Directors
Dr. Peter McLaughlin President & CEO
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NAVIGATING A NEW HEALTHCARE LANDSCAPE Planning for a post-pandemic world The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruptor to PRHC and the broader healthcare sector, and has consumed a great deal of our energies. Like hospitals across the province, we are working hard at PRHC to support our staff and physicians as they begin to recover from the experiences of the last two years while continuing to face the challenges of the present. This year, PRHC has seen extremely high patient volumes and faced significant staffing shortages. People coming to the hospital today are also sicker, in part because they have had difficulty getting access to nonurgent care over the last two years. Despite these challenges, PRHC staff and physicians have continued to work incredibly hard, putting in long hours under increasingly challenging conditions in order to provide life-saving care for hundreds of patients each day. We are fortunate to have some of the most hard-working, caring and dedicated people on our team at PRHC, and a great deal of work has been happening to develop innovative strategies to support our organization and our healthcare workers within this shifting landscape. Our priority has been to continue delivering excellent care in the face of many new constraints and realities, and our focus on patient care will continue as we navigate the evolving COVID-19 situation and chart the future of acute healthcare for our community and region. Our chief constraints at PRHC continue to be staffing and bed occupancy; these issues are being seen in hospitals across Ontario and Canada. Both of these challenges
pre-date the pandemic and have been exacerbated by the effects of COVID-19 on the healthcare system. With each wave of the pandemic, mandatory slowdowns of non-urgent care have also resulted in long wait lists for surgical and other procedures; almost 600,000 fewer surgeries were performed in Ontario in the first 22 months of the pandemic compared with 2019. PRHC has been working tirelessly to catch up on this backlog; these efforts to ramp up care are challenged by the ongoing health human resource shortages across the province and beyond. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has also extended to the hospital’s budget in a variety of significant ways. We have continued to be fiscally responsible within this volatile financial landscape, and to advocate with the province to ensure that patients in our community and region continue to have access to excellent care, closer to home. But like hospitals across Ontario, we are facing mounting financial pressures, and we must find ways to keep doing the same work with less funding. Provincial funds do not keep pace with inflation or our patient volume growth, which has been significant over the last decade and is projected to continue in the years and decades ahead. Despite these constraints, each year hospitals must produce a balanced budget and balanced operations. As we face these challenges together, our first priority is to ensure that PRHC continues to be strong, resilient, and set up for success, so that every patient has access to the care they need in the years and decades to come.
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INVESTING IN THE FUTURE OF PATIENT CARE
Thank you to the PRHC Foundation, and through them, our generous community donors, who have made so many important investments into equipment and technology possible over the years. EPIC IMPLEMENTATION
One of the most important quality and safety initiatives in PRHC’s history happened in December 2021, as we launched the Epic digital clinical information system with our six partner hospital organizations across the central east region of Ontario. This new, regional clinical information system provides every hospital patient and their care team with real-time access to the patient’s health information in one place, supporting clinicians in making the best possible decisions about every individual’s treatment and care. The creation of a single, integrated digital health record for every patient across seven partner hospital organizations has had an impact on nearly every aspect of the care and support we provide at PRHC, transforming the way clinical care is delivered. Like any change of this magnitude, the shift to Epic has come with challenges, and our staff, physicians and community providers continue to adjust to a new way of delivering care supported by the Epic system. Patients and families are also beginning to experience some of the new features that are now available with Epic, including MyChart, an online portal where patients can access their own personal health information.
SECOND MRI MACHINE
In February 2022, PRHC added a new, second MRI machine to our Diagnostic Imaging department, allowing us to perform
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as many as 5000 additional MRI procedures each year. Demand for MRI scanning has increased by 53 per cent over the last four years at PRHC, and the addition of a second machine will improve access to care closer to home, dramatically reduce patient wait times, and offer modern, leading-edge MRI technology for our patients. A special thank-you to the PRHC Foundation for their continued support in bringing a second MRI to PRHC.
MASTER PLANNING
PRHC has continued to move through the early stages of our Master Planning process, which looks ahead to the next two decades of our ongoing evolution as an organization. As the population in Peterborough and the surrounding region continues to grow and age, our programs and services at PRHC must also grow to meet the needs of the communities we serve in the years and decades to come, and ongoing provincial support will be critical to ensuring we are positioned for continued success. Peterborough is one of the fastest-growing areas in Canada, and has also become one of the country's “oldest” communities demographically, with individuals over the age of 65 accounting for 20 per cent of its population. Age drives healthcare demand – almost 46 per cent of public healthcare spending is to meet the needs of those aged 65 and older.
At PRHC, patient volumes have increased over the last decade, our community and surrounding catchment region have grown, and the medical needs of our patients have become increasingly complex. We have also been adding to and expanding our programs and services in recent years to support better, more specialized care closer to home. PRHC is already at or exceeding capacity in many areas and will not be able to properly serve the health needs of the population without capital and program expansion. We are projecting ongoing growth in our patient volumes over the next 20 years,
and the unique demographics of the Peterborough area make modernization and expansion of PRHC all the more critical. It is more important than ever that we take steps now to ensure we can continue to meet our growing healthcare needs locally. The hospital’s Master Plan will provide a path forward – a coherent vision and longterm plan that will address today’s acute care needs and support our community’s growth over decades to come. Now is the time to build for a future that will be as caring and supportive as the past.
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ACCREDITATION WITH EXEMPLARY STANDING In May 2022, PRHC achieved Accreditation with Exemplary Standing for the second consecutive time. This is the highest possible level of accreditation, awarded to organizations that “go beyond the requirements of Accreditation Canada and demonstrate excellence in quality improvement.” In PRHC’s case, we met or exceeded 98.6% of the more than 2700 Accreditation standards – our highest-ever score. This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic and implementation of a new clinical information system, PRHC faced challenges unlike anything we have seen before. And yet throughout our on-site survey, our staff and healthcare workers continued to demonstrate all of the qualities that make them such a remarkable team of hardworking people who are committed to providing excellent patient care and support.
STRATEGIC PLAN 2020-2024 In May 2022, PRHC’s Board of Directors voted to extend the hospital’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan into 2024. A strategic planning engagement process will be initiated in 2023 to inform the hospital’s next strategic plan for 2024-2027; this will include a number of opportunities for our partners and community members to share their insights. To read PRHC’s full 2020-2024 Strategic Plan, please visit prhc.on.ca/about-us/accountability/
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DR. PETER MCLAUGHLIN, PRESIDENT & CEO, TO RETIRE IN 2023 In May 2022, PRHC’s Board of Directors announced that Dr. Peter McLaughlin has decided to retire in 2023 after 17 years with PRHC, during the last eight of which he has served as the hospital’s President & CEO. Dr. McLaughlin has led PRHC with an unwavering focus on keeping patients at the forefront of every conversation and decision. During his tenure as President & CEO, PRHC has faced significant challenges and achieved many successes, including: Highest possible standing from Accreditation Canada in 2017 and 2022 An award for Leading Governance Excellence from the Ontario Hospital Association in recognition of PRHC’s collaboration with Peterborough Housing Corporation to develop supportive, affordable housing for seniors National recognition by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) for work in safe handover and clinical cultural competence initiatives International recognition by the National Safety Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) for surgical safety standards Successful implementation of Epic, a new, regional clinical information system that will transform the way PRHC and its partner hospitals deliver care for generations to come Supporting the organization through the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic Incorporating patient and family engagement into all levels of the hospital’s work and decision-making
Creating a culture of continuous quality improvement, with a focus on patient and staff safety Providing leadership in the creation and continued growth of Peterborough Ontario Health Team Fostering more collaborative relationships with partners in the community and across the region The Board of Directors has struck a search committee and selected an external firm, Boyden Canada, to support a national search for a new President & CEO. Dr. McLaughlin has agreed to continue in his role until a successful candidate is selected, with a goal of retiring on or around May 31, 2023.
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PRHC BY THE NUMBERS 2020/2021 2021/2022 2020/2021 2021/2022
LAB TESTS 1.81 MILLION 2.14 MILLION
BABIES DOSES OF MEDICATION 2.5 MILLION 2.62 MILLION
1,642 1,675
EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT VISITS 68,320 76,592 CARDIAC PROCEDURES 3,004 3,185
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SURGICAL PROCEDURES 17,663 27,278 HIP & KNEE REPLACEMENTS 781 831
MENTAL HEALTH OUTPATIENT VISITS 35,648 35,517 RADIATION TREATMENT VISITS 3,057 5,000
DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING PROCEDURES 129,489 140,098
OUTPATIENT VISITS 233,813 248,331 ADMISSIONS 18,225 19,018
PRHC FINANCIALS 2021/22
11%
2%
4% 1%
REVENUES ($ THOUSANDS) Ministry of Health 294,475 (82%) Ontario Health - Cancer Care Division 41,327 (11%)
82%
Other insurers and self-pay 6,826 (2%) Other revenue 15,552 (4%) Deferred contributions 2,884 (1%)
3%
EXPENSES ($ THOUSANDS) Salaries, wages and benefits 241,362 (67%)
14% 16%
Supplies and other expenses 56,188 (16%)
67%
Drugs and medical supplies 49,730 (14%) Amortization of equipment 11,588 (3%)
SOURCE: PRHC 2021/22 AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
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