According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, over 12-thousand kids aged 17 and under were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of their initial hospitalization.
In BC, over six percent of pediatric patients were re-admitted to the hospital after their initial visit during the 2018-19 calendar year.
The rate for Northern Health came in lower than the provincial average of 5.6%.
Spokesperson Eryn Collins told Vista Radio the numbers should be taken with a bit more context.
“A big part of that can include the fact that our smaller regional numbers and the fact that a small difference in those numbers can have a big impact in terms of percentage that can make some indicators disproportionately higher or lower.”
Collins cautions that the health authority’s rate could be impacted by high specialized care is in other jurisdictions like the BC Children’s Hospital.
“The provincial and national results indicator is calculated on where the patient lives while for us, the hospital results contribute to where the service was actually provided.”
CIHI Spokesperson, Joseph Amuah states while the re-admission process can be a headache for families, in some cases, it’s unavoidable
“Even though readmission is frustrating and inconvenient for families and potentially carries some risks, it can’t completely be eliminated because we seek best practices through the transparency measurement along with the comparisons and discussions were doing right now.”
The top 3 reasons for readmission’s in Canada were pneumonia and respiratory tract infections, digestive conditions, and complications following procedures.
Canada has a pediatric patient readmission rate of 6.9% based on the report’s findings.
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