Central Vermont Medical Center rated first in Northeast for hospital safety

Central Vermont Medical Center  was rated first among hospitals in the Northeast  for the highest safety score and number four for the highest safety score in the nation in the August 2012 issue of Consumer Reports. CVMC not only scored fourth in the nation, but had the highest score of all hospitals in  Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia. 

Central Vermont Medical Center, at number four for safety in the nation,  was only  fractionally behind the hospitals ranked numbers two and three and one point behind the number one hospital in the nation.

“I am proud of all members of CVMC’s staff,” said CVMC President and CEO Judy Tartaglia.  “This is a tremendous accomplishment and reflects CVMC’s daily practice in every department in every corner of the medical center.  It’s all about the patient, quality of care, safety and patient outcomes.”

This investigative piece, “How Safe is Your Hospital” rates hospitals based on data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services except infection data which comes from the states and the Leapfrog Group.

According to the magazine’s information about the ratings Consumer Reports  looked at six categories of hospital safety:  infections, readmissions, communication, scanning, complications and mortality.  Following are two examples of these at CVMC.

CVMC calculates infection rates for catheters using "1000 catheter device days" as the denominator. We calculate rates this way so we can benchmark with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) ’National Healthcare Safety Network' (NHSN) programs. The CDC comparison benchmark rate for Medical/Surgical ICU's is 1.5. Our infection rate has been zero except for 2007 when one patient was identified with a  Catheter line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI).

CVMC’s 2012 report card, posted on the  Vermont Department of Financial Regulation web site shows that CVMC had  a 30-day readmission rate for heart failure patients and  pneumonia patients that was statistically lower (better) than the national rate.

A major part of CVMC’s  commitment to improving quality is our pledge to publicly share our performance data and provide clear explanations of what these measures mean. Information about our performance in key areas helps you make good decisions about your health and health care. In this section we report information about the quality of the care we provide at Central Vermont Medical Center. These results, available at www.cvmc.org show you how well we do in some key areas. We compare our performance whenever possible. 

CVMC 7.9.2012