Intermountain Hospitals Earn High Scores in New Federal CMS Star Ratings

Three Intermountain Healthcare Hospitals achieved a five-star rating, their highest score ever.

They are:

• Intermountain Medical Center, Salt Lake City: Five Stars
• LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City: Five Stars
• Utah Valley Hospital, Provo: Five Stars 

Only 7.4% of all hospitals in America earned a five-star rating. The point of the ratings is to help the U.S. government share data with the public simply and consistently, and help healthcare consumers compare hospitals based on standardized quality measures. According to CMS, better outcomes mean more stars, and the most common overall hospital rating is three stars.

Shawn Morrow, administrator of LDS Hospital, says: “The five-star rating reflects the dedication of Intermountain caregivers to our patients. It’s extremely rewarding to see so many Intermountain hospitals perform well, which is really a reflection of Intermountain Healthcare’s focus on being a model health system.”

“This is a credible, data-based ranking from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It’s very gratifying to see that almost all of Intermountain’s hospitals received four or more stars this year, and three — Intermountain Medical Center, LDS Hospital, and Utah Valley — received five stars,” said Mark Ott, MD, medical director of Intermountain Medical Center.

"First and foremost, this accomplishment is due to the hard work of extraordinary teams of caregivers who are committed to patient safety and to quality of care. Our caregivers are focused on continuous improvement and receiving a 5-star rating is just one of the outstanding results of that effort,” said Kevin Brooks, Utah Valley Hospital administrator.

How the star rankings are compiled. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Star Ratings summarize hospital performances on 57 measures that affect patients who are treated for a wide range of illnesses and injuries, including mortality, safety of care, readmission rates, patient experience, effectiveness and timeliness of care, and medical imaging.

Data is listed on CMS’s Hospital Compare website at www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare, which is designed to make quality measures more transparent across the nation. 

CMS’s Hospital Compare website does exactly what its name implies: It helps people compare the performance of hospitals across the United States. Information on the federal website includes:

• The hospital’s overall rating.
• Its patient experience, or HCAHPS, scores, which show you how the hospital is ranked by patients compared to other hospitals in Utah and the nation.
• Scores on the timeliness and effectiveness of its care.
• Its rate of complications and deaths compared to national results.
• Its rate of unplanned hospital visits and readmissions for heart failure, pneumonia, stroke, coronary artery bypass grafts, hip and knee replacements, and colonoscopy.
• The efficiency of its use of medical imaging tests such as mammograms, MRIs, and CT scans compared to other hospitals in Utah and the nation.
• Average payment rates for selected services including heart attacks, hip/knee replacements, and pneumonia compared to national averages — and the value of care, which combines quality measures with payment rates.