MMC achieves quality scores that are among best in the nation
Government's website – www.HospitalCompare.hhs.gov –
lets public view quality data
MINDEN, LOUISIANA – July 27, 2009. The high standard of quality patient care provided by the employees and medical staff of Minden Medical Center was validated this month with the posting of the newest quality data on the U.S. Government's website Hospital Compare, according to George French, Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The site, which includes quality performance data for hospitals throughout the country, shows that Minden continues to exceed national standards for "best care" practices."Our staff has achieved an impressive 90-100% compliance on 21 of 25 best care practice metrics. These are standards of care that have been established by The Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services," said French, who is celebrating the staff's accomplishments through a letter-writing campaign to employees, physicians and the community. "Another website that analyzes this data shows that we are performing among the top 1% of hospitals in the nation for the most recent reporting period (2007-2008). I want to publicly commend our employees and our medical staff. It is very gratifying that our commitment to providing the highest quality of care has been objectively measured and validated."
The hospital also scored well on patient experiences, with the percentage of patients giving the hospital a high score of "9" or "10" significantly higher than the state or national average. Patients reporting they received help quickly and got information on what to do after they were discharged were also higher than state and national averages.
The Hospital Compare website was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Health and Human Services, and other members of the Hospital Quality Alliance: Improving Care Through Information (HQA). The information on this website comes from hospitals that have agreed to submit quality information for Hospital Compare to make public. The newest information was posted on July 8, and includes three years of data.
The website helps consumers find information on how well hospitals followed standards for "best practices" for patients who had certain medical conditions or surgical procedures. Consumers can currently access information about hospital care practices for patients who were treated for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia as well as who had surgery. The measures are based on scientific evidence about treatments that are known to get the best results. In addition, the site includes 10 measures from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) about patients' ratings of their hospital experience. The public can access the website by visiting www.HospitalCompare.hhs.gov and selecting Find and Compare Hospitals, or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).
The other website French mentioned - www.WhyNotTheBest.org - shows that Minden's overall quality scores are good enough to place it in the Top 1% of all hospitals in the nation. Developed by The Commonwealth Fund to assist health care professionals in analyzing and improving care process, this website uses performance data reported on the Hospital Compare site. It includes performance data for nearly every hospital in the nation, some 4,440 institutions that report data to Hospital Compare.
To create summary scores for each condition, the WhyNotTheBest site uses a methodology prescribed by the Joint Commission. This approach suggests that the summary score be the number of times a hospital performed the appropriate action across all measures for that condition, divided by the number of opportunities the hospital had to provide appropriate care for that condition. Summary scores were not calculated if a hospital did not report on all the measures for each condition and did not have at least 30 patients for at least one of the measures for each condition.
"We believe it is critical that healthcare consumers become more informed about their choices for hospital care, and about how to evaluate hospital quality," French said. "We're pleased that there are now several resources that allow the public to objectively analyze different quality measures, and we encourage anyone who makes healthcare decisions for their family or business to take advantage of the information that is available."
"We have a great opportunity to educate our community about the high quality of care we provide," he continued. "We want to thank our employees for their dedication and commitment to providing the very best care, and our medical staff for their leadership and oversight that has helped to ensure we are exceeding national standards."
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