Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital (SNLH) ranks in the top third of U.S. hospitals for overall quality and is rated at the top for patient experience, according to recently updated data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
On a five-star scale, SNLH is rated four-star for overall hospital quality and five-star for the patient experience.
“For the past several years, we have had a focused quality improvement program in place to help our hospital staff provide the highest level of care and compassion to every patient coming through our doors,” SNLH CEO Lesley Ogden said. “Patients are noticing these improvements and CMS has confirmed it, through a variety of important quality measures.”
At SNLH, Theresa Via, director of Quality Resources, has guided teams of employees and a patient and family advisory council as they work together to enhance quality and the patient experience.
“This success comes from an accumulation of work over the last five years, with many people providing great ideas on how to make our hospital experience more exceptional,” Via said. “Not only do we have great ideas, we have implemented them across the board. By doing this, we have seen incremental increases in all areas of patient satisfaction over this time.”
Via said SNLH’s top strengths are in the areas of: Communication with Nurses, Response of Hospital Staff, Communication with Doctors, Discharge Information, Communication about Pain and Communication about Medications.
In the latest release of data, 7.9 percent of U.S. hospitals achieved the highest five-star rating for overall quality, 29.2 percent of hospitals earned the four-star rating, 34.0 percent of hospitals are rated three-star, 21.5 percent have two-star ratings, and 7.6 percent of U.S. hospitals have just one-star. About 18 percent of U.S. hospitals do not report enough measures to be eligible for an overall rating.
The hospital quality rating is based on a variety of mandated reportable measures through the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program, and the patient experience rating is based on random patient surveys through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey, also known as HCAHPS. The information is publicly released online at medicare.gov/HospitalCompare.
