Texas Health Care Quality Improvement Award
Good Shepherd Medical Center received the Texas Health Care Quality Improvement Silver Award from TMF(r) Health Quality Institute, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Texas. TMF established the awards program in partnership with The Texas Hospital Association, Texas Medical Association, Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals and Texas Osteopathic Medical Association.
Texas Health Care Quality Improvement Awards honor Texas hospitals that are performing quality initiatives aimed at improving outcomes in patient care by recognizing those hospitals that have improved their performance on specific national quality measures. The awards acknowledge hospitals for improving care related to acute myocardial infarction or AMI (heart attack), heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care. These clinical areas have been designated as national health care priorities by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit, standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.
To earn the Silver Award, a hospital had to achieve or maintain performance between 90 and 100 percent on the Appropriate Care Measure and to have met all other awards requirements. These included collecting data on quality indicators for four rolling quarters beginning October 1, 2010, having mortality scores within the projected range and submitting the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) data. (Data for mortality rates and HCAHPS are not available for critical access hospitals and, therefore, were not part of the awards criteria for these hospitals.)
For more information on the awards program, see the TMF Health Quality Institute awards Web site at http://award.tmf.org/.