St. Bernards Medical Center has received three awards for outstanding clinical performance from VHA Oklahoma/Arkansas, one of 16 regions for VHA Inc., a national healthcare network.
The awards recognize St. Bernards for outstanding clinical quality based on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Joint Commission core measures, outstanding performance in Infection prevention and improving performance in emergency department care.
St. Bernards is one of 25 hospitals in the Arkansas/Oklahoma region to be recognized for excellent clinical performance for heart attacks. Award criteria are based on performance data related to the treatment of heart attacks tracked from the third quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009. The clinical excellence award indicates that a hospital has achieved average performance scores equal to or exceeding 95 percent for the four quarters.
St. Bernards is one of 14 hospitals in the region to be recognized for clinical excellence in patient safety. The patient safety awards recognize hospitals that have either significantly reduced or eliminated infections in patients requiring artificial ventilation or receiving treatment through central line catheters during their hospital stay. The baseline measurement was calendar year 2008, and the repeat measurement was for calendar year 2009. St. Bernards received the patient safety award for having extremely low rates for both ventilator-associated pneumonia and central-line-associated blood stream infections.
St. Bernards is one of 10 hospitals in the two-state region recognized with Emergency Department throughput performance improvement awards. They recognize hospitals that decreased the number or percentage of patients who left the ER before being seen or improved the overall length of stay while in the ER. These awards are based on the full 12 months of emergency department operational data for 2009. St. Bernards had a 10 percent or greater reduction in both leaving without being seen and overall length of stay for all ED patients (over 2008 baseline) when compared for the year of 2009.
“VHA works with dozens of hospitals across Oklahoma and Arkansas, and our mission is to help them become better performers,” says Bruce A. Naylor, M.D, vice president for the VHA Oklahoma/Arkansas region. “We provide hospitals with web tools that enable them to assess their current performance, clinical blueprints that guide them to better performance and a regional collaborative that enables them to network with each other to accelerate the pace of performance improvement. Public expectations, payer demands and government mandates are pushing hospitals to provide better care. By recognizing hospitals with clinical quality awards, we hope to demonstrate that hospitals can overcome financial obstacles that often stand in the way of achieving clinical excellence.”
“We are especially pleased to be recognized by VHA for our quality performance in the three areas,” stresses Michael K. Givens, administrator of St. Bernards Medical Center. “These are not awards we ‘applied’ for. They have come simply as recognition of our continuing quest for excellence in providing comprehensive, compassionate healthcare services to residents of Northeast Arkansas and Southeast Missouri, based on review of publicly available data.”
VHA is a national healthcare network that provides industry-leading supply chain management services and supports the formation of regional and national networks to help members improve their clinical and economic performance. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, VHA has 17 offices across the U.S. and serves more than 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and more than 23,000 non-acute care organizations nationwide.