Hospital reporting on patient safety issues provides valuable data that can help reduce risk and improve outcomes within Ontario's health care system. Clear and standardized reporting by all hospitals in the province will help create a patient safety culture in which health care professionals learn from things that go wrong and use and share the knowledge across the system to reduce or eliminate the risk.

By April 2009, Ontario hospitals will be reporting on eight patient-safety indicators that can provide valuable data on which to base effective benchmarks, best practices and foster patient safety improvements across the province's health care system :

• Clostridium Difficile Associated Disease (CDAD)
  C. difficile is a bacteria that causes infectious diarrhea and that can spread in health care settings. Find out about C. difficile rates in Ontario hospitals.

• Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)
  MRSA is a bacterium that can cause infections and that can spread in a health care settings. Find out about MRSA rates in Ontario hospitals.

• Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus (VRE)
  VRE is a bacterium that causes difficult-to-treat infections, and that can spread in health care settings. Find out about VRE rates in Ontario hospitals.

• Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR)
  Read about HSMR and how it is calculated in Ontario hospitals.

• Central-Line Primary Blood Stream Infection (CLI)
• Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia (VAP)
• Surgical Site Infection Prevention
• Hand Hygiene Compliance