Patient-Focused Funding

INPUTS: $53-million total* for expenditure on the four patient-focused funding programs meant to provide better care. Essentially, patient focused funding rewards hospitals for better care, and hospitals use that money to improve services, which, in turn, opens the door for more funding. $27-million for procedural care program, established to reduce the time patients waiting the longest for care must wait. $13-million for emergency department pay for performance, designed to improve patient access to care by reducing the amount of time that patients spend waiting in the emergency department. $12-million for activity based funding that the hospital earns based on the number of patient cases it completes in the year and the complexity of each inpatient case. $1.4-million for American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, a program used to measure and improve the quality of surgical care. *money allocated in 2010-2011 OUTCOMES: 36,000 more patients received surgical and diagnostic care and there were 67,000 additional patients seen within the targeted time in emergency departments. MATTHEW BAMBACH/THE GLOBE AND MAIL » SOURCE: BC HEALTH SERVICES PURCHASING ORGANIZATION