Ministry Good Samaritan Health Center, Merrill was recently named one of the iVantage HealthStrong™ Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) in the United States.
CAHs are certified to receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare. The reimbursement they receive is intended to improve their financial performance and thereby reduce hospital closures. Each hospital must review its own situation to determine if CAH status would be advantageous. CAHs are certified under a different set of Medicare Conditions of Participation that are more flexible than those of other acute care hospitals.
Ministry Good Samaritan is joined in the recognition by Ministry Door County Medical Center, Sturgeon Bay as two of 13 Wisconsin CAHs to earn the designation. Wisconsin placed more Critical Access Hospitals on the Top 100 list than any other state.
In total, one-third of the top 100 Critical Access Hospitals are found in the upper Midwest in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. As of the beginning of this year, there are more than 1,300 certified CAHs in the country.
“This recognition once again proves that the state of Wisconsin is a national leader in health care quality,” said Ministry Good Samaritan Health Center President Mary Krueger. “Ministry Good Samaritan plays a vital role for the people of Lincoln County and this recognition is possible because of the dedicated commitment of our staff to provide excellent service and quality to our patients.”
The iVantage HealthStrong™ Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals scored best among critical access hospitals on the iVantage Health Analytics’ Hospital Strength Index™. The 2013 Top 100 CAH announcement is the second release of this important designation. The Hospital Strength Index is first-ever comprehensive rating of CAHs and the results recognize the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals that provide a “safety- net “to communities across rural America – measuring them across 56 different performance metrics, including quality, outcomes, patient perspective, affordability and efficiency.
Findings of the iVantage Health Analytics study on the nation’s Critical Access Hospitals shed new, multi-dimensional light on the characteristics of the Top 100 performing CAHs. The 2013 “Benchmark Performance for Critical Access Hospitals” study is a trending study of the rural hospital industry.
Small and rural hospitals play a critical role in providing efficient and effective healthcare that is on par with other larger suburban and urban counterparts. “Rural hospitals have new and difficult demands that are best managed with actionable information. The Hospital Strength Index reflects the multiple challenges of running a hospital by incorporating the measures on which the industry has worked to gain consensus and standardization,” said John Morrow, executive vice president of iVantage Health Analytics, Inc.