Housekeeping Audits
PHSA partcitipcates in an annual province-wide housekeeping audit conducted across health authorities. Westech Systems FM, a BC-based company conducts the audits.
Audits are random and unannounced. Westech Systems visits hospitals and residential care facilities across BC to conduct audits of different rooms and locations representative of various areas of the site. Around 10% of all rooms at each site, or more than 10,000 hospital and care facility rooms, are inspected.
Audits look at the cleanliness of toilets and sinks, whether dirt or scuff marks have been removed from hard floors, scrutinize objects and surfaces above eye level to ensure high dusting is taking place, and search for stains and built-up dirt in other areas. Reports also identify problem areas. The rooms and their facilities are then rated on a score out of 100.
|
Overall Score 2008/09 |
Reaudit Score
2008 |
Overall Score
2007/08 |
Overall Score
2006 |
Overall Score
2005 |
| Children's & Women's Health Centre of BC* |
85.72 |
87.98 |
82.8 |
88.59 |
88.53 |
| Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children |
95.44 |
92.88 |
81.9 |
97.54 |
94.56 |
| BC Cancer Agency - Vancouver Centre |
89.95 |
n/a |
88.01 |
87.78 |
87.59 |
| BC Cancer Research Centre (Vancouver) |
93.22 |
n/a |
95.9 |
95.69 |
n/a |
| Riverview Hospital |
86.85 |
n/a |
89.74 |
78.93 |
70.20 |
| Mental Health Building** |
97.13 |
n/a |
98.09 |
n/a |
n/a |
| Average PHSA score |
91.39 |
90.43 |
89.41 |
89.71 |
85.22 |
*For the purpose of this report, C&W includes BC Children's Hospital and BC Women's Hospital & Health Centre.
**The Mental Health Building did not open until 2007.
As you can see in the table above, BC Children’s Hospital, BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre and Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children received scores that were below industry benchmarks in the initial 2007/08 report. This was a concern and we took immediate steps to address the situation. We met with the contracted service provider to determine how to correct the problems. Once corrective actions had been put in place, we asked Westech to perform another random and unannounced audit of the facilities. That occurred in July 2008.
The re-audited facilities scored higher than the industry best practice benchmark of 85% in the follow-up audit. Children’s and BC Women’s scored 87.98 percent and Sunny Hill scored 92.88 percent.
It is important to keep in mind that with any audit, it is a statistical sampling at a certain moment in time. For example, the audit could have occurred prior to a housekeeper cleaning the room or directly after. This can cause the results to fluctuate from time to time. This is why we employ continuous monitoring and audits to determine overall trends.
Based on our overall big-picture results (internal and third-party independent audits), we are satisfied with the overall performance of housekeeping services at these facilities. We will continue to monitor these services and hold our providers to high standard of service.