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September 3, 2008
Hospital News
Harton Regional Medical Center today reported summary composite results for its quality core measures for the six month period ended June 30, 2008.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes quality core measures for hospitals for each quarter, with a time lag, on a twelve month rolling basis. CMS' most recently published core measure scores are for the twelve months ended September 30, 2007, nearly a year ago. Since January 2008, Harton Regional has conducted its own monthly surveys of quality core measures as defined by CMS in order to know and act upon its results on a more timely basis well in advance of CMS' quarterly public release.
In January 2008, Harton Regional put into practice its “Process for Perfection” quality improvement program which included, among other things, continuing education for employees and physicians, the implementation of best demonstrated practices for Emergency Room and Inpatient processes, the implementation of evidence based protocols for the appropriate quality indicators, more timely monthly internal reporting analyses and monthly operational reviews, and the assignment of authority, accountability and responsibility for improvement for all quality indicators.
In an effort to more accurately reflect the current level of quality care being delivered at Harton Regional, we are providing internal quality core measures that have been compiled since the inception of our “Process for Perfection” program. An independent third party, Total Benchmark Solutions, LLC. has compiled a composite quality score, based on a 100 point scale, for Harton Regional which encompasses the CMS defined quality score measures for Heart Attack, Heart Failure, Pneumonia, and Surgical Care Improvement.
For the six months ended June 30, 2008, the most recent internal composite score for Harton Regional was 91.1 which compares to a composite score of 80.2 for the most recent quality core measures published by CMS for the twelve months ended September 30, 2007.
“The dedicated employees and physicians at Harton continue to provide high quality and compassionate healthcare services that meet or exceed industry standards. We are very pleased with the quality improvements we have made thus far, but there is room for continued improvement in order to achieve our vision of leading the hospital industry in quality outcomes,” said CEO, Matt Roberts “While the recently published CMS quality core measure data indicates where we were a year ago, our composite quality score as of June 30, 2008 reflects TODAY’s quality of health care that residents in our community can expect to receive at Harton. We will continue to strive to be the best.”
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