HealthGrades’ annual study released this fall rated Joint Replacement care at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, St. Joseph with five stars, or “Better Than Expected” performance. This is the ninth year in a row that Lakeland has received this recognition. HealthGrades, the nation’s leading independent ratings organization, evaluates patient outcomes for 5,000 hospitals. This research is the only comprehensive analysis based solely on patient mortality and complication rates.

The public is demanding increased public reporting of quality measures, and recent government reform efforts support this call to action. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 40 percent of adults report that they believe there are major differences in hospital quality in their immediate geography. Additionally, since 1996, the number of consumers that indicated they would choose a hospital based on a high quality rating over familiarity has increased to 72 percent from 59 percent.

“This significant achievement underscores Lakeland’s commitment to providing quality care, close to home,” said Dr. Loren Hamel, president and CEO, Lakeland HealthCare. “Our success in joint replacement care is attributable to our dedicated orthopedic team who strives daily for medical excellence and compassionate care.”

The HealthGrades study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes in nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from the years 2007, 2008 and 2009. Among the findings related to inhospital complications in this year’s study are:

• Across all procedures in which complications were studied, there was an 80 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more complications in a five-star rated hospital compared to a one-star rated hospital.

• Across all procedures studied, there was a 63 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more inhospital complications in a 5-star rated hospital compared to the U.S. hospital average.

• If all hospitals performed at the level of a five-star rated hospital, 185,875 inhospital complications may have been avoided among Medicare patients over the three years studied.
Specific examples of initiatives Lakeland has undertaken to reach this quality achievement include:

• A commitment to multidisciplinary care of patients via the orthopedics team

• Standardization of practice and process improvement initiatives to achieve the best practice in all areas of the program

• Incorporation of state-of-the-art technologies such as computer navigation and minimally invasive approaches

• A Total Joint Camp program offering patient education and rehabilitation therapy

• Preoperative orientation for patients to meet the multidisciplinary team and post-operative rounding by the team

• In-unit physical therapy, including group therapy

• Hip and knee pain seminars

•  Commitment to patient satisfaction

The 2011 HealthGrades hospital ratings are free to the public at www.healthgrades.com.