Medicare adds star ratings to its Hospital Compare website/3 Stars for Mercy Regional Medical Center/Acadiana Medical Center

Medicare adds star ratings to its Hospital Compare website

By Bob Moos
Southwest regional public affairs officer for the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Are you the kind of consumer who reads reviews or looks for ratings before you shop? Wouldn’t it be helpful to have the same sort of ratings when choosing a hospital?
Emergencies obviously call for rushing to the nearest hospital. But when you have time to plan, it’s worth looking around and deciding which hospital best meets your needs. If you’re considering a facility, you may want to know what its patients thought of their care.
Medicare’s Hospital Compare website – at medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html – has just made it easier for you to do that. The site has added star ratings to help you better understand how satisfied recent patients were about their experience at particular hospitals.
The site already enjoys a solid reputation with the public, showing how more than 4,700 hospitals scored on various indicators of quality care. You can compare hospitals on the basis of such factors as clinical outcomes, customer satisfaction and patient safety.
The new star ratings focus on customer satisfaction and measure how well doctors and nurses communicated with patients, how well the hospital staff managed patients’ pain, how clean and quiet the hospital was and how well the staff prepared patients for discharge.
The ratings come from the responses of patients randomly surveyed about their treatment between July 2013 and June 2014. They’ll be updated every three months on the website, as the government continues to collect surveys of more recent patient experiences.
Medicare assigned stars to more than 3,553 Medicare-certified hospitals nationwide. Another 1,102 couldn’t be included because too few patients completed surveys.
The 85 rated Louisiana hospitals scored an average of 3.6 stars for patient satisfaction – slightly above average. Twenty percent received five stars, 35 percent rated four stars, 32 percent scored three stars, and 13 percent received two stars. No Louisiana hospital had just one star.
The 17 Louisiana hospitals that received Medicare’s top rating of five stars were Central Louisiana Surgical Hospital in Alexandria, Surgical Specialty Center of Baton Rouge, Neuromedical Center Hospital in Baton Rouge, Citizens Medical Center in Columbia, Fairway Medical Center in Covington, Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Cut Off, Cypress Pointe Surgical Hospital in Hammond, Physicians Medical Center in Houma, Heart Hospital of Lafayette, Lafayette General Medical Center, Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital, Doctors Hospital at Deer Creek in Leesville, St. James Parish Hospital in Lutcher, P & S Surgical Hospital in Monroe, Green Clinic Surgical Hospital in Ruston, Specialists Hospital Shreveport and Southern Surgical Hospital in Slidell.
Here’s the complete list of the 85 rated Louisiana hospitals; 32 other hospitals were not rated because too few patients completed their surveys:
Abbeville – Abbeville General Hospital -- 4 stars
Alexandria – Central Louisiana Surgical Hospital – 5 stars
Alexandria – Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital -- 3 stars
Alexandria – Rapides Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
Bastrop – Morehouse General Hospital -- 3 stars
Baton Rouge – Surgical Specialty Center of Baton Rouge -- 5 stars
Baton Rouge – Neuromedical Center Hospital -- 5 stars
Baton Rouge – Woman’s Hospital -- 4 stars
Baton Rouge – Baton Rouge General Medical Center -- 3 stars
Baton Rouge – Ochsner Medical Center – Baton Rouge -- 3 stars
Baton Rouge – Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
Bossier City – Willis Knighton Bossier Health Center -- 3 stars
Chalmette – St. Bernard Parish Hospital -- 3 stars
Columbia – Citizens Medical Center -- 5 stars
Columbia – Caldwell Memorial Hospital -- 4 stars
Covington – Fairway Medical Center -- 5 stars
Covington – St. Tammany Parish Hospital -- 4 stars
Covington – Lakeview Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
Crowley – Acadia General Hospital -- 2 stars
Cut Off – Lady of the Sea General Hospital -- 5 stars
Deridder – Beauregard Memorial Hospital -- 4 stars
Eunice – Mercy Regional Medical Center/Acadian Medical Center -- 3 stars
Gonzales – St. Elizabeth Hospital -- 4 stars
Hammond – Cypress Pointe Surgical Hospital -- 5 stars
Hammond – North Oaks Medical Center -- 4 stars
Homer – Homer Memorial Hospital -- 4 stars
Houma – Physicians Medical Center -- 5 stars
Houma – Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center -- 4 stars
Houma – Terrebonne General Medical Center -- 4 stars
Independence – Lallie Kemp Medical Center -- 4 stars
Jennings – Jennings American Legion Hospital -- 4 stars
Kenner – Ochsner Medical Center - Kenner -- 2 stars
Lacombe – Louisiana Heart Hospital -- 4 stars
Lafayette – Heart Hospital of Lafayette -- 5 stars
Lafayette – Lafayette General Medical Center -- 5 stars
Lafayette – Lafayette Surgical Specialty Hospital -- 5 stars
Lafayette – Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center -- 4 stars
Lafayette – University Hospital and Clinics -- 4 stars
Lafayette – Regional Medical Center of Acadiana -- 3 stars
Lake Charles – Lake Area Medical Center -- 4 stars
Lake Charles – Lake Charles Memorial Hospital -- 4 stars
Lake Charles – Christus St. Patrick Hospital -- 2 stars
Lake Providence – East Carroll Parish Hospital -- 3 stars
LaPlace – River Parishes Hospital -- 3 stars
Leesville – Doctors Hospital at Deer Creek -- 5 stars
Leesville – Byrd Regional Hospital -- 3 stars
Luling – St. Charles Parish Hospital -- 3 stars
Lutcher – St. James Parish Hospital -- 5 stars
Mamou – Savoy Medical Center -- 4 stars
Mansfield – DeSoto Regional Health System -- 4 stars
Marksville – Avoyelles Hospital -- 2 stars
Marrero – West Jefferson Medical Center -- 4 stars
Metairie – East Jefferson General Hospital -- 3 stars
Minden – Minden Medical Center -- 4 stars
Monroe -- P & S Surgical Hospital -- 5 stars
Monroe – St. Francis Medical Center -- 4 stars
Monroe – University Health Conway -- 2 stars
Morgan City – Teche Regional Medical Center -- 2 stars
Natchitoches – Natchitoches Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
New Iberia – Iberia General Hospital and Medical Center -- 3 stars
New Iberia – Dauterive Hospital -- 2 stars
New Orleans – Touro Infirmary -- 3 stars
New Orleans – Tulane Medical Center -- 3 stars
New Orleans – Charity Hospital and Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans -- 2 stars
New Orleans – Ochsner Medical Center -- 2 stars
Oak Grove – West Carroll Memorial Hospital -- 4 stars
Opelousas – Opelousas General Health System -- 2 stars
Raceland – Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital -- 4 stars
Rayville – Richardson Medical Center -- 4 stars
Ruston – Green Clinic Surgical Hospital -- 5 stars
Ruston – Northern Louisiana Medical Center -- 3 stars
Shreveport – Specialists Hospital Shreveport -- 5 stars
Shreveport – Christus Health Shreveport ‐ Bossier -- 4 stars
Shreveport – Willis Knighton Medical Center -- 3 stars
Shreveport – University Health Shreveport -- 2 stars
Slidell – Southern Surgical Hospital -- 5 stars
Slidell – Ochsner Medical Center - Northshore --3 stars
Slidell – Slidell Memorial Hospital -- 3 stars
Springhill – Springhill Medical Center -- 4 stars
Sulphur – West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital -- 4 stars
Thibodaux – Thibodaux Regional Medical Center -- 4 stars
Ville Platte – Mercy Regional Medical Center/Acadian Medical Center -- 3 stars
West Monroe – Glenwood Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
Winnfield – Winn Parish Medical Center -- 3 stars
Winnsboro – Franklin Medical Center -- 4 stars
Zachary – Lane Regional Medical Center -- 3 stars
Hospital Compare’s new star ratings for patient satisfaction will be followed next year by star ratings for hospitals’ overall quality of care, which will include patient safety and clinical outcomes.
By adding star ratings to its Compare websites, Medicare is trying to help you make more informed decisions about your health care. The public reporting also gives low-performing providers a compelling incentive to improve their practices and procedures and, hence, their scores.
Nursing Home Compare already uses star ratings to help you check out nursing homes and choose one with quality in mind. The Physician Compare and the Dialysis Facility Compare sites have just begun including star ratings. And Home Health Compare will add stars later this year.
Of course, as informative as these websites can be, they can’t tell the whole story about where to go for care. They’re simply a screening tool that lets you focus on a few providers that interest you.
Visit with your doctor about the best hospital for you. Research shows that some hospitals do better than others at treating certain conditions. And talk to family members and friends about what they liked or disliked about their recent hospital stays and which facilities they’d recommend.
Medicare also recently updated its “Guide to Choosing a Hospital,” which includes a checklist of questions to ask your doctor and explains how to find the hospital that’s the right fit for you. A free copy can be downloaded at medicare.gov or requested by calling Medicare at 1-800-633-4227.
Once you’ve done your homework, you’ll have peace of mind knowing you’ve made an informed choice about your care. Then you can concentrate on the rest of your preparations for your hospital stay.