Newton Medical Center gets 5-star rating

NEWTON — Newton Medical Center, part of Atlantic Health System, announced this week that it has achieved 5-star ratings for its performance in five different medical conditions from Healthgrades, the leading online resource helping consumers make informed decisions to find the right doctor and the right hospital for the right care.
This achievement is part of new findings and data released by Healthgrades and is featured in the Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation. Every year, Healthgrades evaluates hospital performance at nearly 4,500 hospitals nationwide for 34 of the most common inpatient procedures and conditions.
Newton Medical Center received 5-star ratings for 2017 for treatment of the following conditions:
• Heart Failure
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Pneumonia
• Sepsis
• Respiratory Failure
A 5-star rating indicates that Newton Medical Center’s clinical outcomes are statistically significantly better than expected when treating the condition or performing the procedure being evaluated.
“The recognition by Healthgrades helps to underscore the work that has been done to elevate the patient care at Newton Medical Center in recent years,” said Joe DiPaolo, president of Newton Medical Center. “Our goal has been to make Newton Medical Center the place that our community can rely on for high quality care, and the doorway to Atlantic Health System’s Trusted Network of Caring.”
The new report demonstrates how clinical performance continues to differ dramatically between hospitals regionally and nationally. This variation in care has a significant impact on health outcomes. For example, from 2013-2015, if all hospitals as a group performed similarly to hospitals receiving 5 stars as a group, on average 223,412 lives could potentially have been saved and 162,215 complications could potentially have been avoided.
For the 2017 Report to the Nation, Healthgrades compared hospitals with statistically better than expected performance (5 stars), as a group, to those with statistically worse than expected performance (1 star), as a group, and found:
• From 2013-2015, patients treated for Heart Failure in hospitals with 5 stars for in-hospital mortality have, on average:
o 62.0% lower risk of dying than if they were treated in hospitals with 1-star for in-hospital mortality.*
o 2.6 times more likely to die than if they were treated in hospitals with 5 stars for in- hospital mortality.*
• From 2013-2015, patients treated for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in hospitals with 5 stars for in-hospital mortality have, on average:
o 81.7% lower risk of dying than if they were treated in hospitals with 1 star for in-hospital mortality.*
o 5.5 times more likely to die than if they were treated in hospitals with 5 stars for in-hospital mortality.*
“Hospitals that have achieved Healthgrades 5 stars have demonstrated a commitment to exceptional quality care for their patients,” said Evan Marks, Chief Strategy Officer, Healthgrades. “In an environment where consumers have more choices about where to receive their care, a hospital’s commitment to achieving a superior degree of quality for its patients is more important than ever.”
*For its analysis, Healthgrades evaluated approximately 45 million Medicare inpatient records for nearly 4,500 short-term acute care hospitals nationwide, assessing hospital performance relative to each of 32 common conditions and procedures, as well as an evaluation of comparative outcomes in appendectomy and bariatric surgery using all-payer data provided by 18 states. Healthgrades recognizes a hospital’s quality achievements for cohort-specific performance, specialty area performance, and overall clinical quality. Individual procedure or condition cohorts are designated as 5-star (statistically significantly better than expected), 3-star (not statistically different from expected) and 1-star (statistically significantly worse than expected) categories. The complete Healthgrades 2017 Report to the Nation and detailed study methodology, can be found at www.healthgrades.com/quality.