PINEHURST — FirstHealth Moore Regional, including its Hoke and Richmond campuses, has achieved two quality distinctions from Healthgrades, the leading marketplace connecting patients and providers: the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award and the Healthgrades 2021 Outstanding Patient Experience Award.
Each year, Healthgrades releases these awards to recognize the top 2% of eligible hospitals in the nation for excellent performance in safeguarding patients from serious, potentially preventable complications, as well as providing a positive experience for patients during their hospital stay. Healthgrades evaluated just over 4,500 hospitals and recognized Moore Regional as one of 84 elite hospitals that achieved both patient safety excellence and outstanding patient experience distinctions.
Moore Regional is one of only four hospitals in North Carolina to achieve both awards for 2021. Additionally, Moore Regional is the only hospital in the state to achieve the Outstanding Patient Experience Award for 14 years in a row.
“The prestigious Patient Safety Excellence Award from Healthgrades is just one more example of FirstHealth’s organization-wide commitment to the highest quality and safest care,” said Mickey W. Foster, MHA, CEO for FirstHealth of the Carolinas. “This incredible accomplishment in the midst of a pandemic is one that marks FirstHealth’s place as a leader in patient safety. I’m incredibly proud of our outstanding team that places patient safety and patient satisfaction at the forefront each and every day.”
“Hospitals that have received both the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Award and Healthgrades 2021 Outstanding Patient Experience Award are not only providing exceptional patient care, but doing so year after year,” said Brad Bowman, MD, chief medical officer, Healthgrades. “Given the changing health care landscape amidst COVID-19, its more important now than ever for patients to pay attention to hospital quality when researching where to seek care. We congratulate these organizations for their commitment to hospital quality.”
Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award
From 2017 through 2019, there were 190,273 potentially preventable patient safety events among Medicare patients in U.S. hospitals.* And, if all hospitals, as a group, performed similarly to hospitals performing better than expected on each of 13 Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) evaluated by Healthgrades, on average, 106,052 patient safety events could have been avoided.*
During this time frame, four patient safety indicators accounted for 72% of all patient safety events (collapsed lung, hip fracture due to an in-hospital fall, pressure or bed sores and catheter-related bloodstream infections). Healthgrades found that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award were, on average*:
- 50.3% less likely to experience a collapsed lung due to a procedure or surgery in or around the chest, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.*
- 60.3% less likely to experience an in-hospital fall resulting in hip fracture, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.*
- 66.5% less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.*
- 65.4% less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non- recipient hospitals.*
During the study period (2017 through 2019), Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipient hospitals demonstrated excellent performance in safeguarding Medicare patients, as measured by objective outcomes—risk-adjusted patient safety indicator (PSI) rates—for 13 PSIs defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). A 14th PSI included in the evaluation is Foreign Objects Left in Body During a Surgery or Procedure, which is a “never” event and does not have an expected rate.
Healthgrades 2021 Outstanding Patient Experience Award
In addition to being recognized as one of Healthgrades 2021 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipients, FirstHealth Moore Regional also out-performed peer hospitals in providing outstanding patient experience.
Healthgrades evaluated performance by applying a scoring methodology to 10 patient experience measures, using data collected from a 29-question experience survey from the hospital’s own patients. The survey questions focus on patients’ perspectives of the care they receive in a hospital, ranging from cleanliness and noise levels in patient rooms to factors such as provider communication and responsiveness to patients’ needs. The measures also include whether a patient would recommend the hospital to friends or family as well as their overall rating of the hospital.
