As one of the nation’s leading faith-based health systems, the core of Ascension’s Mission is to serve our communities with high-quality, compassionate care with special attention paid to the poor and vulnerable. In fact, we recently earned our highest-ever average score in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 2024 Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings, increasing our average star rating to 3.48 stars and exceeding the national average.
During National Healthcare Quality Week in October, we reflected on this milestone and how it serves as a testament to the high level of care we provide, enhanced by the trust and feedback from our patients and providers.
Over the last three years, Ascension’s hospitals have been consistently improving quality, wait times and the overall patient experience. We’ve achieved this by not only listening to our patients and workforce through an open line of communication, and importantly, by acting on their feedback.
In 2023, Ascension launched “We’ve Got Your Back,” a campaign to build upon our culture of quality care and safety. It has further empowered our 131,000 associates to share best practices in patient safety and identify gaps where hospitals can improve patient care and trust. The campaign fosters open and honest lines of communication with the providers who work with our patients day-to-day, “We’ve Got Your Back” is helping us continue to evolve and improve at a faster pace to deliver quality results.
At the quality and experience level, Ascension implements a listen-first approach that captures patient feedback every step of the way, from appointment scheduling and point of care to discharge. We are implementing technologies commonly used in industries outside of healthcare – like hospitality and aviation – that enhance our understanding of how our patients experience the care they receive. By collecting real-time feedback, we can deliver results across service lines, allowing us to proactively address any safety, quality and communication concerns.
This multi-faceted approach has led to quantifiable improvements, including higher scores in patient experience and safety and a decrease in safety-related issues. Additionally, the health system has a more efficient emergency department, experiencing more than a 30% reduction in the time from when a patient enters the emergency department to when they see a caregiver.
On World Patient Safety Day this past September, we participated in the White House Healthcare Safety Forum, and reaffirmed our culture of prioritizing patient safety, with a special focus on eliminating health disparities and reducing harm at the point of care. It was promising to see how the field is engaging in conversations on improving patient care, including through commitments to the National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety and CMS’s new Patient Safety Structural Measure. In order to accomplish the shared goals discussed at the White House, it is imperative for Congress to protect federal programs that help hospital systems like ours continue to innovate and improve the quality of our care.
For example, Ascension hospitals serve high volumes of low-income, underinsured and uninsured patients, which is why it’s critical that lawmakers mitigate cuts to the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital program. In tandem with this and other protections for safety net hospitals, Congress must also renew the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, set to expire at the end of next year, which many Americans rely on to access the care they need.
These are bipartisan solutions that will strengthen our health care landscape and help ensure hospital systems like Ascension can continue to provide a high level of care to all.
Ascension is proud that we’re delivering on our promise to listen, explore, and innovate how we provide compassionate, high-quality care to patients now and in the future. Similarly, our elected officials can do their part by ensuring the system supports providing the highest quality care for everyone and making tangible improvements to invest in the success of our health system.
Dr. Richard Fogel is Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Ascension, one of the nation’s leading non-profit health systems. Carol Campbell is Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer at Ascension.
