Our Commitment to an Exceptional Healthcare Experience
Griffin Hospital is committed to providing an exceptional healthcare experience for the patients and families we serve. As such, we strive to meet or exceed patient expectations in all aspects of the care we provide. This includes safety and quality, as well as our patients’ perception of the care they receive.
Griffin Hospital’s performance in these areas is publicly reported – along with data from virtually every U.S. hospital – on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare website.
An explanation of some of these key performance measures is outlined below, along with Griffin Hospital’s individual performance benchmarked against other Connecticut hospitals and/or the top 10% highest performing hospitals in the nation.
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Hospital Acquired Conditions (HACs)
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program to provide an incentive for hospitals to reduce HACs. Effective in 2015, the HAC Reduction Program requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to adjust payments to applicable hospitals that rank in the worst-performing quartile of all hospitals with respect to risk-adjusted HAC quality measures.
Our Performance
For fiscal year 2015 (Oct. 1 2014 – Sept. 30 2015), Griffin Hospital had no publically reported surgical site infections, hospital onset stage 3 or stage 4 pressure ulcers, central line infections, ventilator associated pneumonias, or device associated urinary tract infections. This performance across these key HAC measures represents our commitment to patient safety.
In the most recent publicly reported data, Griffin’s relative HAC score was 3.50, which ranks second best among Connecticut hospitals and well below the threshold at which hospitals face penalties from CMS for exceeding the expected score. See more information on the CMS Hospital Compare website.
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Core Measures
The Core Quality Measure Collaborative, led by the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and its member plans’ Chief Medical Officers, leaders from CMS and the National Quality Forum (NQF), as well as national physician organizations, employers and consumers, created a set of core performance measures for the several areas that show how often hospitals provide care that research shows gets the best results for patients with certain conditions. CMS provides this information to help consumers compare which hospitals give recommended care most often as part of the overall care they provide to patients.
Our Performance:
Griffin Hospital scored a Connecticut leading 99.1 on core measures in aggregate, which also compares favorably with the top 10% of U.S. hospitals, which scored 98.2. See more information on the CMS Hospital Compare website.
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HCAHPS
The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Survey is a standardized survey instrument and data collection methodology that has been in use since 2006 to measure patients’ perspectives of hospital care. HCAHPS is the national standard for collecting and public reporting information that enables comparisons of hospital care from the patient’s perspective, which supports consumer choice.
Our Performance:
Griffin Hospital routinely ranks among the highest-rated hospitals in Connecticut for patient experience as measured by HCAHPS. Currently, Griffin ranks second in the state, with 77% of patients rating their overall experience at a 9 or 10 (out of 10). This also exceeds the state average of 67% and the national average among hospitals of 72% of patients rating their overall experience at a 9 or 10.
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Hospital Readmissions
In 2012, CMS finalized its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, which measures a hospital’s readmission performance compared to the national average (for the purposes of the program, a readmission is defined as an admission to a hospital within 30 days of a discharge from the same or another hospital). CMS tracks readmission measures for a number of common conditions, including acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack (AMI), heart failure (HF), and pneumonia (PN), and has recently expanded the list of conditions.
Our Performance
Griffin Hospital’s readmission rates are shown below, compared to the national rate as well as the number of Connecticut hospitals with higher and lower rates than the national rate. See more information on the CMS Hospital Compare website.
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Value Based Purchasing
Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) is part of the CMS effort to link Medicare payments to a value-based system to improve healthcare quality, including the quality of care provided in the inpatient hospital setting. The program attaches value-based purchasing to the payment system that accounts for the largest share of Medicare spending, affecting payment for inpatient stays in over 3,500 hospitals across the country.
Our Performance
Griffin Hospital’s total VBP performance score is 40.96, which ranks in the 74th percentile of hospitals nationally. See more information on the CMS Hospital Compare website.
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CMS Hospital Compare Overall Rating
On July 27, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its Overall Rating, which is a summary of quality measures on the CMS Hospital Compare website that rates hospitals from one to five stars. The score represents overall hospital performance on 64 measures spanning common conditions that hospitals treat.
Our Performance
Griffin Hospital currently has a two star rating. However, the American Hospital Association has very publicly questioned the methodology and weighting applied to the data used to compile the ratings, and an independent report by Georgetown University has raised similar concerns. During the pre-publication comment period for the star ratings, several reviewers expressed concerns and recommendations to CMS to improve the system. In addition, 225 members of Congress signed a letter expressing their concerns with the CMS star ratings signed a letter expressing their concerns with the CMS star ratings,
In Griffin Hospital’s case, the performance on one of the more heavily weighted measures, mortality within 30 days of an acute care hospitalization for heart failure patients, was worse than the national rate. This below average performance is attributable to the high number of heart failure patients being admitted to the hospital but shortly thereafter being discharged from the hospital and being admitted to Griffin’s inpatient Hospice service, home Hospice, or another Hospice service within five days. This occurred during the three-year reporting period used for the star rating. Currently, Griffin Hospital admits these patients directly to the Hospice service without an initial hospitalization.
As one of the Connecticut pioneers in developing inpatient Hospice services on-site, Griffin Hospital has a long-standing commitment to palliative care and providing the most appropriate level of care with the utmost compassion. While this patient-centered approach results in a more dignified and comfortable experience for patients and families, it also affected the mortality rate statistic for heart failure, which in turn impacted Griffin’s overall rating during the CMS star rating reporting period.
Despite these facts, Griffin remains committed to continuously improving its performance in all measures of care, including the overall rating reported on the Hospital Compare website, which is just one measure for consumers to use in making empowered healthcare decisions.