Chester County Hospital recognized

Facility receives national ranking from Healthgrades

Chester County Hospital has been named one of the 100 Best Hospitals in the U.S. by Healthgrades, an online resource for information about physicians and hospitals. It is the second consecutive year the hospital has received the designation.

The hospital was also designated as a 100 Top Hospital by IBM Watson Health (formerly known as Truven Analytics).

Chester County Hospital is the only health care facility in Chester County to be rated in the top 100 nationwide. Both ratings organizations recognized seven Pennsylvania hospitals.

“The fact that we are the only hospital in the county to receive these designations shows that Chester County Hospital is an elite destination for health care,” said Michael J. Duncan, president and CEO.

The Healthgrades designation places Chester County Hospital in the top two percent of more than 4,500 hospitals assessed nationwide for its consistent, year-overyear clinical performance. The IBM Watson Health award designates the hospital as a high-performing community health care provider, according to a press release.

“Being named one of the top 100 hospitals nationwide says a lot about the quality of our staff at Chester County Hospital and

the work they do to provide excellent patient-centered care to our community,” Duncan added.

According to Michael Barber, COO, Chester County Hospital is always looking to improve.

“We look at the core measures we want to improve, or see if there is something new we want to focus on. We are constantly looking at and setting our score card each year and strive to meet and add new things each year,” he said.

In addition to the Healthgrades designation, Chester County Hospital was also recognized with condition-based 100 Best Hospital Awards for cardiac care, critical care and stroke care and received a pulmonary care excellence award in 2018.

“This designation recognizes the fact we have superior quality outcomes across many patient conditions and procedures. We have been consistent for many years,” Barber added.

“It is a point of pride for our staff,” said Kathy Gorman, senior vice president, strategic planning and marketing.

The recipients of the America’s 50 and 100 Best Hospitals Awards must demonstrate superior clinical outcomes across the majority of common inpatient conditions and procedures and have sustained the performance for at least five consecutive years, according to a press release issued by Healthgrades.

Data used by Healthgrades for its designations comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). For two consecutive years, CMS has awarded Chester County Hospital a five-star rating — the highest possible score.

“We don’t apply for these designations; the agencies are pulling from publicly reported data that we report on a regular basis. Once they pull that information and we meet the criteria, then we are notified,” Barber said, adding that while the hospital doesn’t prepare for the designations, “we’re always preparing to provide the best quality. We always have to be ready for someone to look at the data.”

The Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals study also ranks health care facilities based on five-year performance using CMS data. For the latest study, researchers evaluated 2,740 short-term, acute care, non-federal hospitals.

As part of the Watson Health 100 Top Hospitals designation, Chester County Hospital earned a positive rating for significantly improving 30-day readmission rates, lowering the mortality index, having a shorter average length of stay, and keeping inpatient expenses low.

“I’m proud of the work the hospital has done to get to this point and I’m excited about where we’re going,” added Duncan.

Barber added that Chester County Hospital is celebrating its 125th anniversary and is currently in the midst of an expansion that will add 250,000 square feet to the hospital’s campus and is renovating 26,000 square feet of its existing facility. The construction will expand the Emergency Department and include a new procedural platform with 18 rooms including stateof-the-art operating rooms and interventional hybrid/ procedure rooms, and a new patient tower with capacity for 99 beds. The project is estimated to be complete by 2020.

“That will put us over 300 beds for the community,” he added.

“We are building a state of the art facility, but there is a lot of history to preserve. We respect the history and build upon it,” said Gorman

For more information about Chester County Hospital visit ChesterCountyHospital.org. Email business story ideas to business editor/ writer drovins@21stcenturymedia.com

SUBMITTED PHOTO A view of Chester County Hospital, which has been named on of the 100 Best Hospital in the U.S. by Healthgrades and as a 100 Top Hospital by IBM Watson Health.