Chartis honors North Big Horn Hospital for Quality, Outcomes and Patient Perspective

They did it again. For the fourth consecutive year, the North Big Horn Hospital District has received national recognition for quality by the Chartis Center for Rural Health.

The district announced the Chartis Performance Leadership Award on December 4.

“We have exceptional people,” CEO Eric Connell said in an announcement to staff. “This marks our fourth consecutive year receiving the honor in the Quality and Outcomes categories. In addition, we have also earned recognition in the Patient Perspective category for the first time.

“It is exceptionally rare to be awarded in all three categories at once. Across the entire country, only six hospitals (including ours) achieved top-quartile performance in Quality, Outcomes and Patient Perspective. That’s out of approximately 1,800 rural and community hospitals evaluated nationwide. This is another step toward our vision of delivering top-quality healthcare throughout the Big Horn Basin and the region.”

Connell explained the Performance Leadership Award program in his message to staff, quoting Chartis in saying the award program is “based on the results of the Chartis Rural Hospital Performance INDEX, a comprehensive and objective framework for assessing how rural hospitals are performing. INDEX benchmarks are relied upon by rural hospitals, health systems with rural footprints, hospital associations and state offices of rural health to measure performance across multiple areas impacting hospital operations and finance.

In an interview Tuesday, Connell noted that the Chartis Performance Leadership Award is not something the hospital district applies for or seeks.

“Chartis is an organization that evaluates the quality of rural and community hospitals, and they use publicly available CMS – Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- data. That’s the division of Health and Human Services that manages all the government health care. And so, is that an award that was bought? No, they’re using publicly available data to do these index ranks, where we get rank graded in all these different categories.

“They pull the CMS publicly available data, and they analyze it. They’re just looking at quality, outcomes, patient experience. Those are three of the domains. There’s also finance and market share and other things that lead to a good hospital. They start off with those three.”

Chartis echoed Connell’s remarks.

“The areas of quality, outcomes and patient perspective are cornerstones of healthcare delivery across rural America, and this year’s Performance Leadership Award recipients are establishing a standard of excellence for their rural peers to follow,” said Michael Topchik, executive director of Chartis Center for Rural Health. “We are delighted to shine a spotlight on such strong performance and honor the achievement of these hospitals.”

And added North Big Horn Hospital Foundation, Marketing and Grants Manager Payton Gambill, “Our staff continually go above and beyond to ensure our patients receive the best possible care. Earning awards in Quality, Outcomes and Patient Perspectives highlights the outstanding work happening throughout our organization.”

“For me, it’s just another step toward achieving our mission of providing the highest quality healthcare in our community and in the Big Horn Basin,” Connell said. “It’s just another step in the right direction. I think now we’re starting to see consistent results year after year in some of those areas, and it’s nice to make progress and get into that Patient Perspective, the patient experience category, and we want to make forward progress. I think that’s what it’s all about as an organization.”