Healthgrades Recognizes Saint Anne’s Hospital for Excellence in Patient Safety and Patient Experience

Jul 24, 2020

Fall River, MA – Saint Anne’s Hospital has announced that it has once again been recognized for two quality excellence distinctions from Healthgrades: the Healthgrades 2020 Patient Safety Excellence Award™ and the Healthgrades 2020 Outstanding Patient Experience Award™.

Healthgrades, the leading resource that connects consumers, physicians and health systems, releases these awards annually. This year, Healthgrades evaluated just over 4,500 hospitals and recognized 88 elite hospitals that achieved both patient safety and patient experience distinctions.

Saint Anne’s Hospital is among the top 2% of eligible hospitals in the nation to receive both awards and is the only hospital in New England to be recognized with both awards in 2020. This distinction recognizes Saint Anne’s Hospital 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 2020 Patient Safety Excellence Award™
During the study period (2016-2018), hospitals receiving Healthgrades 2020 Patient Safety Excellence Award demonstrated excellent performance in safeguarding Medicare patients, as measured by objective outcomes (risk-adjusted patient safety indicator [PSI] rates) for 14 PSIs defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

If all hospitals in the country performed at the level of award recipients, such as Saint Anne’s, for each of these patient safety indicators, 110,864 patient safety events could have been avoided.

In addition, Healthgrades found that patients treated in hospitals receiving the Patient Safety Excellence Award were, on average*:
• 66.8% less likely to experience pressure sores or bed sores acquired in the hospital, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 63% less likely to experience catheter-related bloodstream infections acquired at the hospital, than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 54.4% less likely to experience a hip fracture following surgery than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.
• 48.3% 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.

“One of the most important things we do together as a hospital is cultivate a culture of safety,” said Saint Anne’s Hospital President Michael Bushell. “We do this each and every day by fostering behaviors that result in safe, reliable and productive performance, while providing high quality care that can earn our patients’ trust, time and again. We are proud of our staff and providers for their commitment to the best in patient care and honored to be among the highest ranked hospitals in the country for patient safety.”

Healthgrades 2020 Outstanding Patient Experience Award™
In addition to being recognized as one of Healthgrades 2020 Patient Safety Excellence Award recipients, Saint Anne’s Hospital also outperformed 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 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 doctor, nurse and staff communication and responsiveness to patients’ needs. The measures also include whether a patient would recommend the hospital to friends or family.

“The elite hospitals that are recognized with both the Healthgrades 2020 Patient Safety Award and Healthgrades 2020 Outstanding Patient Experience Award are organizations that are delivering the highest levels of care when it comes to the experience and safety of their patients,” said Brad Bowman, MD, chief medical officer of Healthgrades. “Consumers can have confidence that these hospitals will deliver quality care.”

This is the 5th consecutive year (2016-2020) the hospital has been recognized with the Patient Safety Excellence Award. Saint Anne’s Hospital also has been recognized with the Outstanding Patient Experience Award for the 4th year in a row (2017-2020), moving to the Top 5% in the nation for Patient Experience this year.

View Healthgrades hospital quality methodologies.

About Saint Anne’s Hospital
Founded by the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation in 1906, Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, Massachusetts, is a full-service, acute care Catholic hospital with 211 beds and satellite locations in Dartmouth, Attleboro, Swansea, New Bedford, and Stoughton, Massachusetts. A member of Steward Health Care, Saint Anne’s provides nationally recognized patient- and family-centered inpatient care and outpatient clinical services to patients from surrounding Massachusetts and Rhode Island communities. Saint Anne’s key services include the Center for Orthopedic Excellence; bariatric surgery; multiple robotic-assisted surgical capabilities, including orthopedic surgery, spine surgery, and general surgery; Saint Anne’s Hospital Regional Cancer Center; two ambulatory surgery centers; the Center for Pain Management; and inpatient geriatric psychiatry services. In addition to Healthgrades’ awards for patient experience and patient safety, Saint Anne’s has earned The Leapfrog Group’s “Straight A’s” for patient safety since 2012. 

*Statistics are calculated from Healthgrades Patient Safety Ratings and Excellence Award methodology which is based primarily on AHRQ technical specifications (Version 2019.0.1) to MedPAR data for years 2016 through 2018 and represent three-year estimates for Medicare patients only.