Saint John Receives Highest Rating Possible of 100% Reflecting Commitment to Patient Safety
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated data on the Hospital Compare website and on data.medicare.gov to provide patients, families and all stakeholders with the information needed to compare the performance of hospitals where they seek medical care. Along with data on quality measures, CMS also publicly released scores grading hospitals on how closely they follow guidelines for treating severe sepsis and septic shock recently. Saint John Hospital, Leavenworth, Kan., part of Prime Healthcare has received a 100% score, when the national average is 49% and the Kansas average is 52%.
“Saint John was the highest scoring hospital within 30 miles of the Kansas City area,” said Paula M. Ellis, DNP, Saint John Administrator and Chief Nursing Officer. “We are very proud of our staff and physicians. They have put strong measures in place to provide excellent care with great compassion to people in our community.”
Paryus Patel, MD, Chief Medical Officer for Prime Healthcare, said, “Identification of sepsis can be challenging and following sepsis protocol to manage the patient through best practices is crucial. We have a focused sepsis team in our system to identify sepsis and send out alerts to identify potential sepsis patients and to render appropriate care starting from the Emergency Department and continuing to follow the protocol when patients are transferred from the ED to other floors in the hospital.” He added, “These systems make sure that the patients are getting correct IV fluids, vasopressor, antibiotics and lab tests at the proper time, to ensure the very best outcomes.”
Director of Nursing, Shannon L. Mingo, RN, said “Our success can be credited to awareness of signs and symptoms and teamwork!” She added, “It is a joint effort between nursing leadership, the nurses on the patient care units, our physicians, the quality team staff, our emergency room manager, nursing supervisors and the lab team. We also work on continuing education to review past cases to help with future outcomes.”
Saint John Hospital, part of the national health system, Prime Healthcare Services, received the high marks along with affiliate hospitals Providence Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas (89 percent); St. Joseph Medical Center, Kansas City, Mo., (91 percent); and St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs, Mo., (88 percent).
Saint John Hospital announced earlier in the summer that it had achieved 5 stars for its performance in Treatment of Sepsis from Healthgrades, the leading online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals.
This achievement is part of new findings and data released by Healthgrades and featured in the Healthgrades 2018 Report to the Nation. Every year, Healthgrades evaluates hospital performance at nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 34 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions.*