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At St. Luke’s Medical Center, it is our goal to provide safe, effective, high-quality healthcare for our patients.
We encourage patients to take an active role in their healthcare, and we believe they should make informed decisions about the physicians and hospitals they trust to provide that care.
What Our Patients Say
We care very much about how patients feel about their experiences at St. Luke’s Medical Center. Our staff tries to make the patient experience as pleasant and comfortable as possible and our patients consistently give us high marks for the way we take care of them. Here are some recent comments from patient satisfaction surveys:
“This is to say a huge thank you for all your support to me during my stay at St. Luke’s. An abiding and warm memory of a difficult time will be your support and kindness to me.”
“I would like to thank St. Luke’s Medical Center’s Emergency Room for taking such great care of me when I needed emergency services. Everyone was very nice and helpful, and I was made very comfortable during my stay.”
“St. Luke’s staff, thanks for all you do for patients. From the ED to the 7th Floor, you made my visit wonderful. Thank you St. Luke’s staff for taking such wonderful care of me while I was in need.”
About Quality Data on the Internet
There is increasingly more public information available about hospitals, doctors and other healthcare providers on the Internet. A number of different agencies evaluate, compare and rate hospitals. These ratings can be a good source of information for healthcare consumers and many of them provide reliable data that can help people make informed decisions about where to seek care.
But, there are some things that should be considered in reviewing these ratings and reports.
Is the information current?
Most data reported on the Internet is historical data. It could be several months old or it could be a few years old. If the data is not recent, it may not accurately reflect the care being provided by a hospital today.
What is included in the data?
In some cases, data may be about only one hospital service or even just a small part of the treatment provided for a certain condition. Consumers should look for comprehensive evaluations of hospital services that take many factors into consideration.
In some cases, data may represent only a short period of time – some reports only include patients cared for in one calendar quarter, limiting the sample size used in the data.
Some reports include only certain types of patients. For example, if only Medicare patients are included in a report, the data would not reflect all of the care provided to a hospital’s patients.
When hospitals are compared using percentages, it is important to know how much data is included in the percentage rating. Data from one hospital may include only a small number of patients with a certain medical condition, while another hospital in the study may treat a much larger number of patients with the same condition. When that happens, percentage ratings can be skewed and misleading.
Who is reporting the data?
There are several reputable agencies evaluating and rating hospitals. Consumers should check the credentials of any group reporting healthcare quality data.
St. Luke’s Medical Center voluntarily reports information to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on nearly two-dozen activities related to care for patients receiving specific services. These measures demonstrate how often the hospital provided the recommended care and treatment for patients with a heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia and for patients having surgery.
> Hospital Compare (website)
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