St. Joseph receives honors from Consumer Reports, PRC, HealthGrades
The honors just keep stacking up for St. Joseph's Hospital in Breese.
Consumer Reports recently launched an on-line rating system for more than 3,400 hospitals nationwide. St. Joseph's in Breese was ranked second of the 140 plus Illinois hospitals for Overall Patient Rating and was one of five of the 45 St. Louis area facilities to receive an “Above Average” rating.
Earlier, Professional Research Consultants or PRC, the hospital's patient survey team, awarded St. Joseph's in Breese 5-Star awards for Inpatient Care, the acute care area 1South, the Women and Infants Center and the Emergency Department. The Illinois Department of Public Health further recognized the ER as an Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics.
The Breese facility also received an “Outstanding Patient Experience Award” from the independent healthcare ratings company HealthGrades, an honor only given to the top 15 percent of hospitals nationwide.
“These are wonderful validations that St. Joseph's in Breese is the best kept secret in the Metro East,” said Lowell Jones, hospital president and Chief Executive Officer.
“Our staff and many people in the community know we have a great facility but having that opinion confirmed by Consumer Reports, PRC and HealthGrades is even better,” he commented.
The Consumer Reports ratings are based on survey responses covering communication, cleanliness, discharge instructions, attentiveness of staff, pain control and quietness from more than 1 million patients.
At St. Joseph's in Breese:
• 99 percent of patients said doctors always/usually communicated well;
• 97 percent said nurses always/usually communicated well;
• 94 percent said rooms and bathrooms were always/usually clean;
• 86 percent said they were given information about what to expect after discharge;
• 92 percent said they always/usually received help as soon as they needed
• 85 percent said staff always/usually explained new medications
• 96 percent said their pain was always/usually well controlled; and
• 94 percent said the area around their room was always/usually quiet at night.
Five-Star designations are given annually to healthcare facilities that score in the top 10 percent of PRC's national client database for the prior calendar year. For the raw data, PRC contacts, via telephone calls throughout the year, a random sampling of patients who have used that particular service—the ER, for example—and ancillary services plus registration, billing, overall safety and privacy issues.
This is the seventh consecutive year that the ED has received PRC's 5-Star honor and the first year Inpatient Care has been so recognized—although last year this area merited a 4-Star rating. This is also the first year 1South and WIC have garnered 5-Star recognition.
“We are proud to receive the PRC award for our ER seven consecutive years and to be honored with the additional 5-Star awards for Inpatient Care, WIC and 1South,” Jones said.
“Achieving this high level of patient satisfaction from PRC as well as Consumer Reports and HealthGrades represents the efforts of everyone—physicians, nursing staff, supporting staff from many areas including Cardiopulmonary, Laboratory, Medical Imaging, Pastoral Care, Housekeeping, Maintenance and related departments as well as our volunteers,” he said.
The HealthGrades' recognition was based on patient satisfaction data for 3,711 hospitals nationwide, said Jan Robert, hospital Quality Management director.
St. Joseph-Breese was the only facility in the area—the next closest was Alton and most were in Central and Northern Illinois—to receive the HealthGrades honor, was one of eight Illinois hospitals to be so recognized for 2009 and only one of a dozen to receive the award for 2009/2010. Of those 12, only four, including St. Joseph-Breese, were consecutive recipients.
“We're very pleased with the recognition,” Jones said. “Over 70 million visitors a year come to the HealthGrades website and to be included is an honor.”
The recognition St. Joseph's in Breese is collecting has been noticed by the St. Louis media.
KMOX radio included the Breese facility in the information about the new Consumer Reports ratings and a Fox 2 News camera crew interviewed Emergency Room staff as part of a story about Saint Louis University's Stroke Network.
For more information, contact Quality Management at 526-5454 or e-mail Jan Robert or Patient Care Services at 526-5410 or e-mail Paulette Evans. Additional hospital information is available at www.stjoebreese.com
