Piedmont Medical Center’s care gets 2-star rating

Piedmont Medical Center received two out of five stars from the just-released Hospital Compare survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Chester Regional Medical Center and Springs Memorial Hospital in Lancaster each received three stars, while Carolinas Medical Center-Main in Charlotte and Carolinas Medical Center in Pineville, N.C., each received four stars.

Hospitals in Greer, Greenville, Mount Pleasant and Abbeville received five stars.

This is the first time the federal government has assigned stars to hospitals. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been publishing scores from patient satisfaction surveys since 2008, using stars to rate nursing homes, dialysis centers and private Medicare Advantage insurance plans.

The Hospital Compare stars are based on 11 survey questions which ask patients to rate their hospital experience. This year’s ratings period was from July 2013 to June 2014.

The federal government awarded five-star ratings to 251 of the 3,553 eligible hospitals, about 7 percent. Four-star ratings went to about 34 percent of the hospitals, three stars to about 40 percent, two stars to about 16 percent and one star to about 3 percent. The federal government did not rate 1,102 hospitals because it lacked data.

Piedmont Medical Center scored less than or equal to the national and state average on all of the 11 patient satisfaction questions. Survey questions included how well nurses and doctors communicate with patients, how responsive hospital staff members are to patient needs, how clean and quiet hospital environments are and how well patients are prepared for post-hospital settings.

Amy Faulkenberry, spokeswoman for Piedmont Medical Center, said the hospital was not satisfied with its star rating and has implemented initiatives such as hourly rounds by nurses to patient rooms, multi-disciplinary teams to improve patient’s experience and noise reduction measures that should affect PMC’s score.

“Our goal is for our future scores to be more reflective of our commitment to deliver exceptional health care to every person we have the privilege to serve and are pleased to say that we have seen improvement per our internal tracking. If you haven’t been to Piedmont Medical Center lately, then you haven’t been to Piedmont,” Faulkenberry said.

Evaluating hospitals is becoming increasingly important as more insurance plans offer patients limited choices.

Dr. Patrick Conway, acting principal deputy administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the star ratings make it easier for consumers to evaluate health care quality and, the star ratings encourage hospitals and clinicians to strive to continuously improve the patient experience.

The agency said a “1-star rating does not mean that you will receive poor care from a hospital. It means that hospitals that received 2 or more stars performed better on this particular measure of patient experience of care.”

The agency suggests health care consumers use the star rating along with other quality information when choosing a hospital.

Some in the hospital industry fear the agency’s 5-star ratings may place too much weight on patient reviews, which are just one measurement of hospital quality. Medicare also reports the results of hospital care, such as how many patients died or got infections during their stay, but those are not yet assigned stars.

This story was originally published April 16, 2015 at 7:25 PM with the headline "Piedmont Medical Center’s care gets 2-star rating."