CCMSD leads state in patient feedback

For a hospital that doesn’t like to submit for awards and accolades, believing that it takes away from the more important goal of caring for patients, there’s a certain irony in the news that Crook County Medical Services District is now leading the state in patient feedback and has placed on the list of Best Nursing Homes compiled by U.S. News & World Report.

The latter recognizes performance and quality of care on a national scale, says CEO Nathan Hough. The former is a statewide ranking system put together by an independent third party.

“The district has ranked number one in critical access hospitals across Wyoming in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare, Providers and Systems improvement (HCAHPS).

“It’s a very structured, comprehensive survey that goes out from a third party, so we can have no influence on it at all. It goes through everything from ‘was the room quiet?’ to ‘how did we do on educating you on the stuff that you needed to know afterwards?’,” says Hough.

The HCAHPS shows that CCMSD is number one in Wyoming in nurse communication, staff responsiveness, medication communication, cleanliness and recommendations to other potential patients. The district ranks second in care transitions and doctor communication and eighth in discharge instructions.

On the chart recording the quarterly results from the HCAHPS surveys, there are only two results not at the highest level. These reflect quietness and overall rating during a very specific period, says Hough.

“We were way above average on everything and then on this last quarter, when we started redoing the air conditioning, we weren’t even in the top ten on our quietness,” he says.

Crook County also excelled in the number of patients who responded to the surveys that were sent out.

“On average, about 27 percent replied to these, but of our patients over 50 percent replied,” Hough says. The feedback from these surveys proves useful, he adds, so it’s a statistic to be proud of.

But for Hough, while accolades of this nature are pleasing, they are not what CCMSD has been focusing on. The district is coming out on top thanks to improvements it has made for the benefit of its patients, he stresses.

“The bulk of what the organization has seen is the focus on taking the very best care for our patients – we have to report that stuff. We don’t apply for best hospital and all that stuff, we’re here to take care of our patients,” he says.

“All the recognition we’ve gotten is from things we have to, by regulatory standard, submit data to.”

That’s not to say Hough doesn’t believe the district could win best hospital if it did apply – in fact, he does. However, he’s not sure all those accolades are particularly worthwhile.

Hough points to one award he saw handed out at a recent convention for “improvement in controlling the pain of their patients”. Good for them, he says, as they had a 30 percent improvement; however, the reality was that it took the number of patients complaining of feeling pain from 90 to 60 percent.

“That’s not so good,” he says, and not really worthy of an award.

“We get some recognition and in a lot of ways our patients deserve that…but it doesn’t really change what we’re doing.”

It’s not the only accolade received recently. The district has also been praised for its quality reporting, Hough says.

“Crook County is at 100 percent and one of the first in Wyoming to achieve that,” he says.

CCMSD has also been recognized for one of the fastest turnarounds in the state. This refers to the amount of time between a patient being admitted and sent on to a more specialized facility.

“Ours is measured in minutes. The average is measured in hours,” he says. “We’re at 50 minutes and that’s across the board.”

Hough explains that this has partly been possible thanks to the introduction of staff paramedics, who can communicate information about the patient that allows doctors to work more quickly once the patient arrives. With the new emergency department now operational with an improved flow for patient care, Hough is anxious to see whether this number improves even further.

At the end of the day, says Hough, the district is still very focused on continued improvement wherever possible, but not for the sake of awards. The progress that has been made over the last couple of years has been about raising the bar for its own providers and making sure that patients can trust their needs can be met locally when they have a medical issue.