The Fraser Health Authority is abandoning a series of targets and indicators for tracking its long-term performance and the health of the population that had until now been published in its annual service plans.

Fraser’s latest plan released last month is stripped of most of the performance measures, which now number just 15, compared to 77 two years ago.

Gone is the goal to have 80 per cent of emergency room patients requiring a bed admitted within 10 hours – a critical measurement of the severity of hospital congestion.

As of 2008, Fraser Health remained far short of that target to reduce hallway medicine, with just 46 per cent of patients admitted through ERs getting a bed within 10 hours.

Now, the only ER measure published is the survey-based “patient satisfaction” category that aims to reach 90 per cent patient satisfaction with their ER experience (currently at 79 per cent.)

Also eliminated is a measurement that tracked progress on increasing the number of acute care beds in the region.

Other now-abandoned indicators tracked the rate of hospital-acquired bacteria infections, rates of ventilator-associated pneumonia, targets to increase rates of mammography screening and mental health patients getting prompt follow-up, and progress in cutting regional tobacco use, aboriginal rates of suicide, diabetes and infant mortality.

Asked whether many performance measures have been dropped because the government anticipates ongoing substandard or even worsening performance, health minister Kevin Falcon said no.

“There’s nothing nefarious here,” he said.

Falcon said the changes are being made to standardize the format of performance reporting across all health regions.

NDP health critic Adrian Dix said the government should have standardized health region plans with more data, not less, being made public.

“They’ve essentially stripped these service plans of information and selected a few indicators to go with,” Dix said. “I don’t know when it became innovative to hold information back from the public, but that’s what they’ve done.”