Covenant Health today (Oct. 18) announced that Covenant Medical Center has received seven five-star ratings for the quality of certain procedures in orthopedics, pulmonary, gastrointestinal and urology from Healthgrades, the leading online resource helping consumers make informed healthcare decisions. The hospital earned more five-star recognition than any other in the region*.
Covenant Medical Center’s full listing of 2017 achievements includes:
§ Orthopedics: Five-Star Recipient for Hip Fracture Treatment for 5 Years in a Row (2013-2017)
§ Pulmonary: Five-Star Recipient for Treatment of Pneumonia for 3 Years in a Row (2015-2017)
§ Pulmonary: Five-Star Recipient for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
§ Vascular: Five-Star Recipient for Repair of Abdominal Aorta
§ Urology: Five-Star Recipient for Prostate Removal Surgery
§ Gastrointestinal: Five-Star Recipient for Colorectal Surgeries
§ Gastrointestinal: Five-Star Recipient for Gallbladder Removal Surgery
The achievements are part of new findings and data released recently on Healthgrades.com and in the Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation. This annual report assesses the quality of care provided by the nation’s hospitals, based on objective clinical outcomes measures.
A five-star rating indicates that Covenant Medical Center’s clinical outcomes are statistically significantly better than expected when treating the condition or performing the procedure being evaluated.
“Being recognized for our outstanding quality of care is the best award we could possibly receive,” said Dr. Craig Rhyne, chief medical officer of Covenant Health. “We are continuously striving to achieve clinical excellence, and recognition such as this helps us realize our tireless efforts and constant strides for excellence are making a difference for the lives of our patients.”
The new report demonstrates how clinical performance continues to differ dramatically between hospitals regionally and nationally. This variation in care has a significant impact on health outcomes. For example, from 2013-2015, if all hospitals as a group performed similarly to hospitals receiving five-stars as a group, on average 223,412 lives could potentially have been saved and 162,215 complications could potentially have been avoided.**
“At Covenant, we bring people together to provide compassionate care, promote health improvement and create healthy communities,” said Richard Parks, Covenant Health’s CEO. “Recognition of our clinical excellence shows we are succeeding in extending our Christian ministry by caring for the whole person—body, mind, and spirit.”
For its analysis, Healthgrades evaluated approximately 45 million Medicare inpatient records for nearly 4,500 short-term acute care hospitals nationwide, assessing hospital performance relative to each of 32 common conditions and procedures. Healthgrades recognizes a hospital’s quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance, and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5-star (statistically significantly better than expected), 3-star (not statistically different from expected) and 1-star (statistically significantly worse than expected) categories.
The complete Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation and detailed study methodology, can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality.
*Region is Lubbock, Texas
**Statistics are based on Healthgrades analysis of MedPAR data for years 2013 through 2015 and represent 3-year estimates for Medicare patients only.
(News release from Covenant Health)
