Hospital Report 2005: Acute Care is the fifth in a series of hospital-specific reports that uses a balanced scorecard approach to report on the performance of hospitals that provide acute inpatient and ambulatory care services in Ontario. A total of 25 indicators were chosen by health care providers, managers, and researchers to examine the four important areas of acute care that form a balanced scorecard: System Integration and Change, Clinical Utilization and Outcomes, Patient Satisfaction, and Financial Performance and Condition.

A Women's Health perspective is integrated into the report to provide a better understanding of issues related to equity (sex differences).

This balanced scorecard for acute care hospitals in Ontario builds on previous acute care reports, including hospital-specific performance indicator results for 98 acute care hospital corporations in Ontario in 2003/04. Together, these corporations handled 95% of all acute care hospitalizations in Ontario in 2003/04. High performing benchmark hospitals are identified. Future reports will include analysis on relationships between measures in different quadrants.

Technical Reports describing the methodological approaches used to develop this report are available.