New TBI Report Card Released for Ontario

June 16, 2020, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

The report card has been released by The Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation and captures regional and provincial data on 11 metrics of prevention, acute management, rehabilitation and reintegration continuums of care. The latest report uses data from 2017/18. The report is filled with valuable data for health care professionals, therpists and family members of those with serious TBI.

Overall, data shows that incidence of admission for TBI and mortality associated with TBI are increasing in Ontario. Additional important findings include that once admitted to acute care, 25-30% of days are spent at an alternate level of care, meaning individuals are occupying beds which are above their care needs and represents an inappropriate use of resources. Rural and northern regions show significant delays to care access and patient follow-up following discharge, with some experiencing homecare wait times as high as 29 days; this is three times higher than the provincial average of nine days.

The Waterloo Wellington LHIN was ranked provincially out of 14 LHINs. It seems that we have quite a bit of room for improvement in some areas such as acute management where we ranked 13, reintegration institutional care (rank 8) and prevention (rank 8).

The Indicators are listed first and our ranking is the number beside it.

1. Prevention standardized rate of TBI/1000 population: rate 2.45% Rank 8
2. Prevention – Annual risk adjusted  mortality rate within 30 days of admission: rate 12.78% Rank 6
3. Acute Mngt -  Proportion of Alernate level of care days to total length of stay in acute care 15.6% Rank 2
4. Acute Mngt - % of acute TBI patients discharged from acute care to inpatient rehab 13.28% Rank 13
5. Rehab – Median Days from TBI onset to Admission to TBI rehab – 17 Rank 7
6. Rehab - Median days from actue or inpatient rehab discharge to homecare therapy visit – 7 Rank 2
7. Rehab – Median # of homecare therapy visits among TBI patients dischaged from inpatient acute rehab – 6% Rank 3
8. a) Proportion of TBI patients discharged from inpatient rehabilitation with a GP/FP follow-up assessment within 30 days of discharge (%) 78.72 Rank 5b) Proportion of TBI patients discharged from inpatient rehabilitation with a follow-up assessment with a specialist within 180 days of discharge (%) 57.45 Rank 11
9. Reintegration Proportion of TBI patients discharged from acute care to CCC/LTC2 - 1.29% Rank 1
10. Reintegration Mean total LOS days in institutional-based care in the first 90 days from TBI onset2 (%) 7.78 Rank 8
11. Reintegration Age- and sex-adjusted all-cause readmission rate at 30 days for patients with TBI (%) 3.53 Rank 3

You can read the entire report card here.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

The opinions expressed here, while intended to provide useful information, should not be interpreted as legal recommendations or advice.