Patient Safety

PETERBOROUGH, Ont. – To continue ensuring a safe, secure and welcoming environment for all, Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) will be installing the Xtract One weapons detection system at its Emergency Department (ED) entrance on a permanent basis. Read More

MONTREAL - Dialogue Health Technologies Inc. is pleased to announce that its Medical Second Opinion (MSO) program is now available to employers across Canada. Already accessible to more than one million Canadians, the program is the first end-to-end patient-driven second opinion service in Canada delivered through a broad network of Canadian specialists. Read More

EDMONTON - Alberta emergency room doctors have counted what they say are six potentially preventable deaths and dozens of close calls for patients who they say waited too long for care in emergency rooms across the province. Dr. Paul Parks (pictured), a Medicine Hat ER physician and past president of the Alberta Medical Association (AMA), says he and his emergency medicine colleagues compiled the list of cases that they say occurred over a two-week period in late December and early January. Read More

TORONTO - Humber River Health has reported a significantly lower rate of patient harm compared to both provincial and national averages, underscoring the organization’s steadfast commitment to patient safety and high-quality care. Read More

OTTAWA - For the fifth consecutive year, the rate of unintended harm experienced by patients in Canadian hospitals has remained stable at 6%, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The latest data shows that in 2024–2025, patients experienced at least one instance of harm in 1 out of every 17 hospitalizations. This figure represents about 153,000 hospital stays out of a total 2.6 million. And in a quarter of those cases, multiple harmful events occurred. Read More

WINNIPEG – Amid rising staff and patient safety concerns at the Health Sciences Centre, two police officers will be deployed to the emergency department, 24 hours a day. Read More

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia Health is planning to ramp up security at hospitals across the province this fall by installing metal detectors that use artificial intelligence to identify weapons. Read More

LONDON, Ont. – In a matter of weeks, more than 250 knives have been seized at the emergency departments of London Health Sciences Centre. Weapons-detection systems installed at the hospital’s two emergency departments have spotted 92 knives since May 6, an average of six a day, at Victoria Hospital’s emergency department and 166 knives, or five a day, at University Hospital’s ER since April 15. Read More

WINNIPEG – Among the issues that led to patient deaths, according to critical incident reports from the first nine months of 2024, were bed rail entrapment, delays in receiving medical diagnosis and treatment, poor monitoring, and a patient leaving an ER without being seen. Read More

OTTAWA – During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital staffing challenges such as sick time, overtime and the use of agency workers grew dramatically, while at the same time rates of potentially preventable harm to patients increased, according to a report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). The report, Hospital staffing and hospital harm trends throughout the pandemic, uses costing and administrative data to compare pandemic trends with pre-COVID-19 times. Read More