Devitt appointed to position by province 14 months ago

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After years of turmoil at The Scarborough Hospital, the community, board and staff should now be able to move forward with improving operations and governance, said provincially appointed supervisor Rob Devitt.

After 14 months as the supervisor overseeing the hospital and its two sites, Devitt released his final report Friday, Oct. 10.

He is confident everyone can move forward to improve on the work done in the past 14 months.

Devitt arrived at the end of July last year to replace the CEO and board of directors.

"Look at how far we've come," he said. "It's phenomenal what the hospital has achieved."

Before getting to work on governance, there were operational issues that had to be dealt with.

"The primary focus of my appointment was to deal with the governance issues," Devitt said.

"But when I arrived at The Scarborough Hospital, I quickly discovered there were major operational challenges that needed to be addressed right away."

Those challenges included a high mortality rate (one of the highest in the country), the recurring deficit, patient satisfaction and staff morale.

"On all of these issues we've turned a corner," he said.

"This is a very different hospital today than 14 months ago."

Devitt was speaking in an interview with The Scarborough Mirror on Friday and was joined by incoming board chairman Mike Mueller and newly appointed CEO and president Dr. John Wright.

Devitt spoke about the strides the hospital has made and the changes that are now in place to prevent a failure of leadership and governance from happening again. That failure evolved over years, he said.

Ten years ago Scarborough General Hospital and Scarborough Grace Hospital were amalgamated into The Scarborough Hospital with two sites - General and Grace. The union did not always work well and many residents in the northwest Scarborough area who were served by the Grace felt their concerns about the hospital's future were not being listened to.

Devitt's report shows the progress made in areas such as the Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio that has gone from 121 to 65, the number of outstanding patient complaints that has gone from 325 in August 2007 to 36 at the present time, and the budget deficit that has gone from a $1.7 million deficit last year to a projected surplus of $1 million this year.

"We are running at a slight surplus, we will hit our target," Devitt said.

While progress has been made in many areas, work still needs to be done. There were still 17 cases of C. difficile at the General site in August, including three deaths. There were none at the Grace site.

In creating the new governance model, Devitt conducted a detailed bylaw review, as well he looked at best practices worldwide. Extensive community consultation was also done.

"The community's direction to me was clear," he said.

"They want quality hospital services, opportunities for meaningful input and a skilled and experienced of board of directors."

Important measures introduced include: the creation of a community advisory committee that must report at every board meeting; community representation on a powerful new audit and accountability committee that oversees both financial and service quality reporting; community representation on the committee that nominates board directors; open board meetings; a series of regular communications and other events; new requirements for the medical credentialing process; and a mechanism that connects future compensation for the CEO to the success of achieving performance standards as defined by the hospital's accountability agreement.

"These changes are all hard wired into bylaws, which cannot be changed without the permission of the membership," Devitt said.

"What I tried to do is create checks and balances," he said. "We hard wired in ways to make sure the community can be heard."

The report is available on the Ministry of Health website (www.health.gov.on.ca), the hospital's website (www.tsh.to), and copies should be available next week at local libraries.