photo by: Contributed

LMH Health's main campus at 325 Maine St.

LMH Health has received five stars for hospital quality in rankings released this week from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. More than 2,200 hospitals nationwide were evaluated on five quality metrics with 234 receiving five stars, the highest rating available.

“There are many quality standards and measures in health care, but the CMS star rating has really emerged as the gold standard,” said Russ Johnson, LMH Health president and CEO. “Achieving this level of recognition is a testament to the commitment of teams across the hospital to providing the highest quality care and service to our patients.”

CMS launched star ratings in 2016 to share hospital quality data in an easy to interpret way for patients, their families and caregivers. Hospitals participating in CMS programs submit data from areas including readmission, mortality, safety of care, patient experience, and timely and effective care.

The culmination of that data results in a star rating for each hospital, providing a comprehensive look at a hospital’s quality. Star ratings are distributed on a bell curve with hospitals in the same cohort, meaning they are measured against the hospitals submitting data in the same categories.

Dr. Kirk Sloan, LMH Health chief medical officer, explained that it takes hard work from staff across the hospital to achieve a five-star rating.

“To be in the top 10% of the country is amazing. You have to be better than everyone else,” he said. “The five-star rating shows we’re taking excellent care of patients, being really safe and proactive as we provide that care.”

What information goes into the CMS star rating?

LMH Health was evaluated on a total of 45 measures across five areas, including mortality. Sloan said LMH is outperforming expectations in that regard.

“We cared for 7,167 inpatients during 2024. Based on the severity of their conditions, we’d expect a mortality rate of 1.97%, meaning that 141 of those patients were expected to die,” he said. “Our mortality rate was 1.81%, which was 130 people. That means that we saved 11 people last year that weren’t expected to survive.”

When it comes to safety of care, departments across the hospital continue to emphasize safety, especially preventing infections. Rachel Lynch, LMH Health’s director of organizational outcomes, said hard work and collaboration between teams makes it possible.

“We’ve made improvements as an organization to keep patients safe and prevent infections,” she said. “Our infection prevention team has had great collaboration with hospitalists, physicians, surgeons and nursing departments to improve practices, which means fewer infections and improved outcomes for patients.”

Patient readmission rates, which indicate the percentage of patients who return to the hospital for another admission after an initial stay, have remained steady. For the stars program, CMS looks at hospital readmission rates for COPD, total knee and hip replacement and hospital-wide unplanned readmissions. The data also shows that LMH Health patients experiencing heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia spend the same or fewer days in acute care than the national average.

“Someone being readmitted to the hospital isn’t good for them or their family. Low readmission rates are evidence that patients continue to receive high quality care at LMH Health,” said Jan Wiebe, chief nursing officer.

While the hospital continues to perform well in terms of timely and effective care and patient experience, work continues to improve its scores. A number of initiatives are underway, including a project for emergency department throughput. This measures the efficient and timely movement of patients through the department from intake and diagnosis to discharge.

“Our emergency department is an area where we and the community want to see improvement,” Wiebe said. “We knew our team was doing its best, yet there had to be a better way to handle patient volume. Investing in the research and recommendations to help us will improve patient experience and outcomes.”

Wiebe said that achieving a five-star rating is a great accomplishment, and it all boils down to the people who contribute to the care the hospital provides.

“We’re a community hospital and don’t have all of the resources as the other five-star hospitals in the area, including The University of Kansas Health System and St. Luke’s,” Wiebe said. “It’s one more thing that points to our commitment to providing great quality care you can get right here at home.”

— Autumn Bishop is the marketing manager and content strategist at LMH Health, which is a sponsor of the Lawrence Journal-World health section.