Mon General Hospital in Top 5% nationally for Patient Experience

Mon General Hospital has been named a recipient of the 2012 HealthGrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award™. This distinction ranks Mon General Hospital among the top 5% of hospitals nationwide based on an analysis of patient satisfaction data for 3,837 U.S. hospitals by HealthGrades, the leading provider of information to help consumers make an informed decision about a physician or hospital.

According to HealthGrades, 80% of patients treated at the nation’s best-performing hospitals would definitely recommend them to family and friends, compared to only 53% of patients who received care from the poorest-performing hospitals. Mon General Hospital was the only hospital in West Virginia to receive the 2012 HealthGrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award™.

The award was announced by HealthGrades on Tuesday, May 22.

“This achievement is the result of Mon General Hospital’s skilled and compassionate staff providing outstanding care each and every day to the patients we serve,” said Mon Health System President and CEO Darryl Duncan.

“Mon General Hospital has been consistently ranked in the top 10 percentile in the country in patient satisfaction by Press Ganey, the company that compiles our patient satisfaction scores,” Duncan said. “In addition, we are the number one hospital in West Virginia for patient loyalty scores – where patients say that they would recommend Mon General Hospital to their families.”

“Receiving the 2012 HealthGrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award™ reflects the exemplary service that we provide and reinforces that our patients think highly of the care they receive at Mon General Hospital,” he said.

To designate its 2012 Outstanding Patient Experience Award recipients, HealthGrades analyzed HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) hospital survey data obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), from April 2010 to March 2011. HealthGrades identified 332 hospitals performing in the top 10% in the nation for patient satisfaction, based on survey responses from patients treated at those facilities. Hospitals had to meet bed size, survey-response size, and clinical-quality thresholds in order to be eligible for the award. Information on award recipients and the ratings methodology is available, free to the public, at HealthGrades.com.

“This year HealthGrades paid particular attention to the impact that patient-provider communication has on patient experience. For example, we found that 27% more patients of the top-performing hospitals reported staff always explained their medications before administering them, compared to hospitals in the bottom 10%,” said Kristin Reed, MPH, HealthGrades Vice President of hospital quality programs and author of the study. “Communication is clearly an important factor for patient satisfaction, but it can also be critical to ensuring positive outcomes. We commend hospitals like Mon General Hospital for setting the standard for outstanding patient experience.”

When compared to hospitals performing in the bottom 10% for patient satisfaction, HealthGrades Outstanding Patient Experience Award recipient hospitals are attributed with the following:

•           50% more patients gave the hospital an overall rating of a 9 or a 10 (10 being the highest possible)

•           38% more patients responded that they always received help from staff quickly

•           23% more patients reported their nurses always communicated well

•           21% more patients felt their pain was always well controlled

•           14% more patients reported their doctors always communicated well

About Mon General Hospital

Mon General Hospital is a 189-bed acute care community hospital. The hospital features all private inpatient rooms, a Women’s Imaging Center, state-of-the-art critical care, cardiac care and emergency department facilities. The hospital recently opened its new Zelda Stein Weiss Cancer Center and a new Orthopedic Center featuring four operating rooms. A new Endoscopy Center will open this summer and the hospital is in the process of expanding its Birth Center and its cardiac catheterization lab.

About HealthGrades

HealthGrades, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is a leading provider of comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals. More than 200 million consumers use the HealthGrades websites, including HealthGrades.com and BetterMedicine.com, to research, select, and connect with a physician or hospital, and use its comprehensive information about clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, patient safety, and health conditions to make more informed healthcare decisions and take action.