Understanding the Role of Hospital Quality and Safety

When a patient seeks treatment at a hospital, they expect to receive high quality, safe care. While this isn't an unreasonable expectation, it's important to realize that a great deal of work goes on behind-the-scenes to ensure every patient's hospital experience is not only safe, but also meets their comprehensive and unique care needs.

Health care quality involves the delivery of care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. Trinity Health Of New England acute care hospitals — Saint Francis Hospital, Saint Mary's Hospital, Johnson Memorial Hospital, and Mercy Medical Center – strive for top decile performance by meeting these standards in every patient encounter. Several government and private agencies have developed a series of core measure indicators, evidence-based standards of care that result in better clinical outcomes for patients.

So how can a patient make an informed choice about where they receive hospital care?

Managed by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), the Hospital Compare website offers information about how well hospitals provide recommended care to their patients. This information can help consumers make decisions about where to go for health care.

The Hospital Compare website also allows consumers to select multiple hospitals and directly compare performance measure information related to heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgery and other conditions. If you visit the website, you will find the most recent hospital survey results organized by general information, patient experiences, timely and effective care, complications, readmissions and deaths, use of medical imaging, and payment and value of care.

Quality and safety come first at Trinity Health Of New England hospitals. “We strive to become the safest health care provider in the nation by adopting a high reliability mindset and fostering a culture of safety,” said Danyal Ibrahim, M.D., M.P.H, Regional Chief Quality Officer and Chief of Toxicology. “Our promise is to listen, partner, and make it easy for our patients and the community to access high quality care. And it's a promise our hospitals are keeping when you consider the 'A' safety grades The Leapfrog Group has recently awarded Mercy Medical Center and Saint Francis Hospital, as well as the 4-Star rating Saint Francis Hospital has received from CMS and Watson Health's inclusion of Saint Francis as a Top 100 Hospital."

You can access a complete listing of the awards our hospitals have received for quality and safety accomplishments on our awards page.

You can access the Hospital Compare Web site at www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare.