Published: November 25, 2009 03:33 pm      

MRHC earns regional awards

McAlester Regional Health Center has received two awards for clinical excellence from the VHA Oklahoma/Arkansas regional office, one of 17 regions for VHA Inc., the national health care network. The awards recognize MRHC for improving overall clinical quality based on CMS and Joint Commission core measures and for outstanding performance in emergency department care.

“VHA works with dozens of hospitals across Oklahoma and Arkansas, and our mission is to help them become better performers,” said Bruce A. Naylor, M.D., vice president of clinical improvement and medical director 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 these selected hospitals with clinical quality awards, we hope to demonstrate that hospitals can overcome the financial obstacles that often stand in the way to achieving clinical excellence.”

McAlester Regional Health Center is one of 31 hospitals in Oklahoma and Arkansas to be recognized for their clinical performance. Recognition is awarded in three general areas: Core Clinical Performance, Patient Safety Awards and Emergency Department Performance.

The Core Clinical Performance Award is given to hospitals that demonstrate clinical excellence based on performance data related to the treatment of heart attacks, pneumonia, heart failure and prevention of surgical site infections. Data was tracked from Q4 2007 through Q2 2008, and compared with baseline measurements during a similar period during 2006 and 2007.

MRHC received a clinical improvement award in the Congestive Heart Failure category. Clinical Improvement awards are given to organizations that improved the aggregate score for any single measurement set over baseline by 5 percent.

McAlester Regional Health Center’s High Performance Award in the Emergency Department category recognizes hospitals that have decreased the number or percentage of patients who left the ER before being seen or have 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.

MRHC’s High Performance Award ranking shows that LOS rates are either equal to or lower than the CDC benchmarks.