Judy Ledet
May 14, 2007Jill Lyons
May 16, 2007
Terrebonne General Medical Center may not have gone fishing, but the hospital hauled in a fairly big fish anyway last Wednesday afternoon.
The facility in Houma received a Distinguished Hospital for Patient Safety Award for 2007 from the national healthcare ratings service, HealthGrades, based in Golden, Colo., in a ceremony held in the hospital’s Medical Atrium.
HealthGrades has given the award annually for the past four years to non-federal hospitals which treat Medicare and Medicaid patients, said company consultant Jennifer Badding.
Terrebonne General was one of 242 hospitals in the U.S. to receive the award, placing the facility in the top five percent of hospitals for patient safety nationwide. The hospital was one of five facilities in Louisiana to be given the honor for 2007.
HealthGrades rated nearly 5000 hospitals in the U.S. to determine which facilities would rank in the top five percent for patient safety, Badding said. The company worked with Medicare and Medicaid data from 2003-2005.
Badding said that HealthGrades used “13 patient-safety indicators for post-operative events and ran Medicare data through models to determine which hospitals possessed the fewest patient safety incidents.”
“You see how your hospital compared to the best hospitals in the country,” she said. “Terrebonne General Medical Center is comparable to the best hospitals.
“It’s difficult to make it into the top five percent,” she said.
HealthGrades divides the award between teaching and non-teaching hospitals.
Last Wednesday marked the first time Terrebonne General has received the company’s Distinguished Hospital for Patient Safety Award.
In the ceremony, Badding spoke to a gathering of several dozen hospital administrators and employees.
“What a significant award this is, how wonderful,” she said. “We grade clinical outcomes, looking for quality outcomes. Your hospital is doing very, very well,” she said. “You’re the only (hospital) in the Tri-parish region (to receive the award in 2007).
“Quality and safety are not an accident,” Badding said.
She presented Terrebonne General President/CEO Phyllis Peoples with a HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital for Patient Safety Award trophy.
“We are extremely honored,” Peoples said. “We didn’t apply for the award. We’re proud of this achievement.”
Mike Fakier, chairman of the Terrebonne General board of commissioners, said, “Thanks for your commitment to patient safety. You have our utmost respect for what you do day in and day out.”
A HealthGrades news release states that “[i]f all hospitals performed at the level of the Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety… [a]pproximately 206,286 patient-safety incidents and 34,393 Medicare deaths could have been avoided and $1.74 billion could have been saved.”
“However,” the release states, HealthGrades “findings also support that progress continues to be made at the top. Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety continue to lead the nation in providing safer care… resulting in much lower costs to society. We believe that Distinguished Hospitals have deliberately chosen and maintained patient safety as a top priority.”
To qualify for the award, a hospital needs to have at least a 2.5 out of 5.0 HealthGrades star rating for quality, Badding said.
