Fairview Feted for Patient Experience
GREAT BARRINGTON — Fairview Hospital has been recognized with a 2013 Outstanding Patient Experience Award by Healthgrades, a leading online provider of comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals.
Fairview Hospital was one of nine hospitals in Massachusetts to receive this distinction, and the only hospital so recognized in Western Mass., ranking among the top 15{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of all hospitals that were evaluated. The Outstanding Patient Experience Award recognizes the high performance of hospitals that have been evaluated by their patients in surveys collected after their discharge from the hospital by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
“Berkshire Health Systems is proud of the exceptional care that is being provided to our patients in South Berkshire by Fairview Hospital,” said David Phelps, president and CEO of BHS. “The consistent level of high-quality care that Fairview’s physicians, nurses, and staff give to their patients is clearly reflected in the survey results for which this award is based. Fairview patients repeatedly relay their positive experiences, and BHS and Fairview are committed to maintaining that level of excellence.”
Added Gene Dellea, hospital president, “the physicians and entire staff at Fairview go above and beyond and are deserving of this national recognition. With the strong support that Fairview has as part of Berkshire Health Systems, we are able to provide a level of care among the best in the nation.”
According to Healthgrades, “these awards distinguish hospitals that have shown superior performance based on specific measures. Patient experience measures responses to Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) patient surveys collected by CMS. These surveys are used to assess performance based on a patient’s perspective of care relative to frequency and consistency of behaviors. The relevance of the patient-experience measure is growing.”
In determining the hospitals to be recognized with an Outstanding Patient Experience Award, Healthgrades looks at several key measures in patient surveys, including overall patient rating of the hospital, whether patients would recommend the hospital to others, how both physicians and nurses communicate with patients, how often patients received help quickly from hospital staff, how well pain was controlled, communication about medications, hospital and room cleanliness, quietness of the patient environment, and discharge information.