ACMH Receives Women’s Choice Award for Emergency Room Care

 

ACMH has been named a recipient of the Women’s Choice Award as one of America’s Best Hospitals for Emergency Care.

This coveted credential places ACMH in the top nine percent for Emergency Care, which was achieved by 373 hospitals - less than 10% of the 3,800 emergency rooms that report data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Emergency Department Nurse Manager Dennis Lager

“While ACMH provides exceptional emergency care to all of our patients across the board, we are pleased to be recognized for this specific population by the Women’s Choice award organization.”

Emergency services account for more than 125 million hospital visits annually, and all clinicians must have expertise in caring for patients across their life span, often when their healthcare needs are urgent and unplanned. Unlike other hospital departments that interact with the same patient and families for an extended period, ES staffs typically have one patient encounter, often when anxiety and fear is at its peak.

“The Women’s Choice Award® seal delivers a powerful message to women, offering them the peace of mind that the recipient is clinically excellent and highly responsive to the patient’s experience, “notes Sharyn S Lee, RN, MS, FACEHP, President of the WCA Healthcare Division. “Awarded Emergency Services Departments must achieve high rankings on eight emergency measures including patient recommendation scores, which is unlike any other healthcare credential recognizing providers today.”

The eight measures CMS publicly reports relate primarily to the amount of time taken in the ER such as time for diagnosis, medication, and admission to the hospital, and are weighted according to the priorities of women surveyed.

Of the eight measures reported by emergency departments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), women rate “door to diagnostic time” or in other words, “door to doctor,” as the most important criteria when selecting an emergency room. The least important reported measure is the percentage of patients who left the emergency department before being seen.

ACMH Executive Director of Operational Excellence & Healthcare Informatics Joyce Wright said

“ACMH has worked hard to improve our emergency room services including our time from patient arrival until they are seen by one of our practitioners. Our recent emergency department expansion serves as a tangible example of our on-going commitment to the delivery of exceptional emergency room care.”

Women’s Choice Award Founder and CEO Delia Passi defended the recommendations as an “important consideration used by women in selecting a hospital for themselves and their family.

National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians President Conrad “Chuck Kearns commended ACMH for striving to reach those goals.

“Providing the best in Emergency Care is the combined effort of hospitals, physicians, nurses and EMS Practitioners,” Kearns said.

A hospital can be eliminated from the award if they fall outside the 25th percentile for two or more of the eight measures, depending on their importance. The award is also limited to those hospitals with a solid recommendation on Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

Awards are based on surveys of thousands of women, as well as research conducted in partnership with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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