ATLANTA — The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that its hospitals were included in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services star rating system for the first time ever.
CMS uses five categories to determine the quality of hospitals:
- mortality
- safety of care
- readmission
- patient experience
- timely and effective care
The more stars out of five that a hospital receives, the better they perform on quality.
While the VA said in a statement that 67% of its hospitals included the ratings received either four or five stars, the Atlanta VA hospital in Decatur only received two.
In addition, the Decatur facility received a 2/5 star in patient ratings.
It's important to note that specialty hospitals (such as cancer or inpatient psychiatric facilities) were not included in the star rating, according to a release.
The VA also stated in a release that 114 of its facilities received a CMS star rating and 23 were not rated.
The data collected by CMS was between July 2018 and March of 2022.
In a statement on the recent scores, the Atlanta VA said:
The recently released CMS hospital ratings were not up to our standards, and relied on data from 2018 to 2021, but do not reflect recent improvements made by the Atlanta VAHCS. The Atlanta VAHCS continues its journey toward high reliability with a leadership commitment that embraces cultivating a safety culture supported by continuous performance improvement efforts.
An 11Alive investigation from 2022 found veterans in Georgia are waiting months for critical health care.
At that time, the wait time at Atlanta's Veterans' Affairs Medical Center for new patients to receive care is 72 days on average. The average wait time for V.A. hospitals nationally is 15 days, according to the V.A.
Full statement form Atlanta VA Health Care System
Our mission is to provide world-class care to every Veteran who walks through our doors, and we will never settle for anything less. We are laser-focused on improving the level of care throughout the Atlanta VA Health Care System (VAHCS). The recently released CMS hospital ratings were not up to our standards, and relied on data from 2018 to 2021, but do not reflect recent improvements made by the Atlanta VAHCS. The Atlanta VAHCS continues its journey toward high reliability with a leadership commitment that embraces cultivating a safety culture supported by continuous performance improvement efforts.
To ensure the delivery of high-quality care for the Veterans who entrust us with their healthcare, we have implemented changes in our operations and delivery of care that have resulted in improvements in CMS-related measures, such as:
* Mortality: Atlanta VAHCS's recent improvement efforts have demonstrated a decreased mortality rate for heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
* Safety of Care: Over the past year, Atlanta VAHCS has seen improvement in preventing hospital-acquired infections for C-diff, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and ventilator-associated events.
* Readmissions: Atlanta VAHCS is among the VA's top 20% of all facilities for having a low hospital-wide readmission rate for all causes.
* Patient Experience: There have been intentional efforts to improve customer service within the organization, and several improvement initiatives have been launched. In addition, our Veteran Trust scores routinely exceed 80 percent, indicating local Veterans choose and trust Atlanta VAHCS for their healthcare needs.
* Timely and Effective Care: Improvement efforts focused on patient flow within our Emergency Department (ED. In the past year, the Atlanta VAHCS has opened two additional sites of care to improve the availability of Veteran access to VA healthcare services.
Another recent initiative to improve the delivery of health care to our Veterans was the establishment of a new robotic surgery program. The Atlanta VAHCS ED was accredited as a Level two Geriatric ED through the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and was the third ED in the state of Georgia and the first in the Atlanta metropolitan area to receive this accreditation.
We are encouraged by positive data trends from the past year, which demonstrate the commitment of the leadership and staff of the Atlanta VAHCS to delivering care that is safe, efficient, effective, timely, and Veteran focused. We recognize there is still work to do, and as a learning organization, we are committed to continuous improvement. We will not rest until we meet our goal of providing the best possible care to every Veteran, every time.