St. Mary’s cardiac care gets high marks in report

KITCHENER — St. Mary’s Regional Cardiac Care Centre ranked better than the national average on all quality indicators in a new report on Canada’s cardiac centres.

The Kitchener hospital’s mortality rate for cardiac surgery was less than half the national rate.

“It’s not just a little increment. It’s a lot,” said Dr. Brian McNamara, chief of cardiovascular services at St. Mary’s.

For both bypass and valve replacement, the 30-day in-hospital mortality was 3.3 per cent across Canada compared to 1.5 per cent at St. Mary’s.

The report released Tuesday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information in collaboration with the Canadian Cardiovascular Society focused on six quality outcome indicators during the three-year period from 2013-14 to 2015-16, including 30-day mortality rates after different heart surgeries and readmission rates.

Only three hospitals of the 38 cardiac centres in the report performed better than the national average in all indicators.

“St. Mary’s outcome data is at the top of the country,” McNamara said. “Naturally, we’re extremely excited about that.”

McNamara said the report’s data validates what the hospital already thought about the care it provided: “We know we do good work.”

He points to the culture of safety at St. Mary’s — where “patient safety is paramount” — and the commitment of the cardiac centre’s entire team, from the person cleaning the operating room to the surgeon.

“It’s a team effort and everybody has some congratulations in order,” McNamara said.

As well, he said St. Mary’s has skilled physicians, both veteran and new talent, performing the heart surgeries and procedures. Vigorous triage of patients before surgery to identify any possible issues and excellent post-surgical care also boost patient outcomes.

McNamara said that now St. Mary’s has proven its ability to provide “bread and butter” cardiovascular care, the aim is to expand into more advanced care including minimally invasive surgery and newer technologies. But to do that, more funding is needed.

“We’ve proven our ability over and over again,” he said.

St. Mary’s cardiac centre, which serves Waterloo and Wellington regions, last year performed 400 catheterizations and angioplasty procedures, 850 bypass and valve surgeries, and 590 pacemaker and implantable cardioverter defibrillator insertions, as well as 10,000 outpatient clinic visits.