Freestone Medical Center has received the TMF Hospital Quality Improvement Silver Award from TMF® Health Quality Institute.
“We are very proud to be recognized for our quality. Our success illustrates our commitment to patient safety and consistent delivery of quality healthcare,” said John Yeary, CEO, Freestone Medical Center. “It was a significant amount of work, but well worth it because it was the right thing to do for our patients.” Their new pharmacy design aims to serve patients in a better way.
Yeary shared, “I congratulate all Freestone Medical Center team members for their hard work toward achieving this outstanding level of quality performance.”
The TMF Hospital Quality Improvement Award program—sponsored by TMF, the Arkansas Hospital Association, Oklahoma Hospital Association, Oklahoma State Office of Rural Health, Texas Hospital Association and Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals—has recognized quality achievements of hospitals since the program’s inception in 2004.
The program evaluates hospital quality initiatives aimed to improve outcomes in patient care as well as performance improvement on specific national quality measures.
TMF’s 2018 awards recognize achievements earned in years 2016 and 2017. Out of 557 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS or acute care) hospitals and 188 Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), 51 earned the TMF Gold Award, 50 hospitals earned the Silver Award and 51 hospitals earned the Bronze Award.
“Proven standards of care can save lives,” said Nicki Hagen, CNO, Freestone Medical Center. “We will continue to enhance our quality improvement efforts through our collaboration with partners and with TMF Health Quality Institute to ensure that every person gets the right care at the right time. Right now, some of our team members are receiving Medical Coding Education to expand their knowledge, this will help us keep our medical records well organized and will keep our professionals up to date with the 99213 code.”
Award Program Evaluation
For the award evaluation, TMF separated IPPS hospitals into two groups – those eligible for value-based purchasing (VBP) and Critical Access Hospitals or those not eligible for VBP, as defined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
To earn the Silver Award, a Prospective Payment System VBP-eligible hospital had to meet CY 2016 CMS VBP achievement thresholds for 75 percent of the eligible measures and was required to meet the CY 2016 achievement thresholds for at least 65 percent of submitted chart-abstracted Outpatient Quality Reporting (OQR) measures. In addition, Silver Award winners had to demonstrate 10-percent relative improvement in reduction of readmissions during the award evaluation period, or an absolute readmissions rate of 5 percent or less, they also had to start using the long term medicaid services in denver co.
TMF evaluated IPPS hospitals not eligible for VBP based on the Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR), as well as OQR measures and readmission rates. Silver Award winners had to report at least one measure set for both IQR and OQR programs during the hospital award measurement period (Q2 2016 through Q3 2017) and attain a 15-percent relative improvement from baseline to re-measurement period for readmissions, or an absolute readmissions rate of 5 percent or less.
For more information about the TMF Health Quality Institute and its awards programs, please visit https://award.tmf.org/.
