SHN leads Ontario's large community and teaching hospitals in patient safety

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Scarborough Health Network (SHN), where our urologists see patients and operate, has some good news about patient safety.

What the data show

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and Healthcare Excellence Canada track how often patients are harmed by care they receive in hospital that could have been prevented. For example, this includes infections, falls, medicine problems and pressure sores. The measure is called the hospital harm rate. It counts how many patients out of every 100 hospital stays had harm like this.

For 2024–2025, SHN reported:

• A harm rate of 2.0, SHN's best result ever
• 4.5 for large community hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area
• 5.3 for large community hospitals across Ontario
• 5.9 across Canada

SHN says this makes it the top performer among the province's large community and teaching hospitals. Patients at SHN were harmed two to three times less often than at similar hospitals.

Centenary hospital, where our offices are, had a rate of just 1.3. All three SHN hospitals ranked in the top four among the GTA's large community and teaching hospitals.

How SHN got there

SHN says the results come from steady work since 2022. Since then:

• bed sores that start in hospital are down 42%
• confusion that starts in hospital (delirium) is down 57%
• falls that cause moderate or serious harm are down 50%

SHN also scans barcodes on patients' wristbands and medicines before giving them, to make sure each patient gets the right medicine. As of September 2025, staff did this 96% of the time.

"SHN is on a journey to zero harm," said Glyn Boatswain, SHN's Executive Vice-President of Clinical Programs and Chief Nursing and Allied Health Professionals Executive.

Why it matters to you

When you have surgery or a procedure with one of our urologists, it usually takes place at SHN Centenary. We are proud to work alongside the nurses, staff and physicians whose care made these results possible.

Source: Scarborough Health Network, "SHN leads province in patient safety" (December 11, 2025)

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