Westerly
Hospital, not so much
More than 50,000
hospital patients responded to a Medicare survey that evaluated how well New
England’s 176 hospitals did in meeting patients’ needs. Medicare now allows
easy on-line access to the evaluations of hospitals at its Hospital
Compare website.
According to
those patient evaluations, summarized in GoLocalProv.com, South County Hospital in Wakefield outscored every other Rhode Island hospital
by a wide margin. Overall, South County ranked at #18 among all 176 New England
hospitals. The next-ranked hospital in Rhode Island was Women’s and Infants, in
29th position.
Troubled
Westerly Hospital was ranked #121, which is bad, but five other Rhode Island
hospitals had even worse ratings: Memorial in Pawtucket at #137, Kent County at
#141, St. Josephs at #154, Rhode Island Hospital at #170. Landmark in
Woonsocket was rated #176, the worst hospital in New England.
Westerly
Hospital’s likely buyer, Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in Connecticut, was
much further down the rankings, at #156, than Westerly, which is not a great
sign for Westerly Hospital patients.
In a separate rating, South County was one of only two Rhode Island hospitals to receive an "A" rating for patient safety from a non-profit hospital scoring group. The other hospital was Miriam. The scoring was done by the Leapfrog group that used federal data and surveys to measure such criteria as preventable medical errors, injuries and accidents, infections, sanitation, medication control and staffing levels. In the same ranking, Westerly Hospital received a "B."
In a separate rating, South County was one of only two Rhode Island hospitals to receive an "A" rating for patient safety from a non-profit hospital scoring group. The other hospital was Miriam. The scoring was done by the Leapfrog group that used federal data and surveys to measure such criteria as preventable medical errors, injuries and accidents, infections, sanitation, medication control and staffing levels. In the same ranking, Westerly Hospital received a "B."
I’ve always
liked South County Hospital. In the 1970s, I was part of the first community
organizing effort in the United States to push hospitals to fulfill a
never-enforced obligation to treat indigent patients.
My research had
uncovered a post-war subsidy program that built most of America’s hospitals.
That subsidy program required those hospitals that received federal
construction money – and that included every hospital in Rhode Island – to
treat patients regardless of ability to pay and to provide a reasonable amount
of free or reduced cost care to the uninsured.
We organized
campaigns to force every RI hospital in comply with that requirement[1].
Except for South County Hospital, because we didn’t have to. At that time, in
the middle of a bad recession, South County was running radio ads telling
unemployed workers who had lost their insurance that they could count on South
County to treat them.
I met with then
South County CEO, the recently-deceased Donald Ford, to find out why, alone
among all hospitals, that South County took its community service obligation
seriously. Donald explained to me that he felt it was the right thing to do and
was also good for the hospital in that he wanted the hospital to be an integral
part of the community.
He also
explained his philosophy of life to me. “Will,” he said, “95% of the people are
good and decent and if you treat them right, they will treat you right in
return.”
“But there’s
that 5%,” he continued, “Who live by their wits and will do all they can to
trick and cheat you, and they’re so good at it, there’s little you can do to
stop them. Why should I let those 5% spoil my enjoyment of the 95%?”
Donald was my
friend and mentor until Cathy and I left Rhode Island in 1979. I often heard
stories about him. Once, on a flight back from San Francisco around 10 years
later, I sat next to a woman who, by her accent, was an obvious Rhode Islander.
We talked, and I discovered she was a nurse and a union steward at South
County.
“So what’s it
like negotiating a contract with Donald Ford?” I asked.
“Terrible,” she
said, “he won’t put up a fight. He just gives us what we want which makes some
of our members wonder why we need a union.”
Times have
changed of course. Donald
retired in 1986 and died in December 2010. If you click
on the link, you’ll read a wonderful obituary to a truly unique and quirky guy
missed by many, including me.
But when I saw
South County Hospital’s high ranking, I wasn’t surprised and immediately
thought back to my visits with Donald at the hospital and walking with him
through the facility and seeing him greet every staff member and many of the
patients by name, with genuine warmth and caring.
High ratings
from patients is only one of many factors in choosing a hospital. Rhode Island
Hospital may have a terrible patient rating, but it has some of Rhode Island’s
top practitioners and technology. If you are going to need to use a hospital,
and by the odds, we all will at some point, look at all the factors carefully
and use Medicare’s
database to help make informed decisions.
[1]
That organizing work spread nationwide quite rapidly. I was invited to visit
several states to help local organizations replicate Rhode Island’s Hill-Burton
organizing model (it was the work that ultimately led to me getting recruited in 1979 to work for the national Legal Services Corporation).
Within a few years, these groups coalesced to force
the US Department of Health and Human Services to codify the Hill-Burton
access and free-care obligation into national policy. Now, when you see
those signs in every hospital saying that no one will be turned away for lack
of ability to pay, remember the push to get that right started here in Rhode
Island.