St. Francis news
Study lists St. Francis among top-10 best value, quality-care hospitals in state
St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee is among the top-10 hospitals in the state for providing quality health care with efficient value, according to results of a study published in Minnesota 2020, an Internet news site.
The report said that while the nation debates how to insure its citizens without cutting the quality of health care, several Minnesota hospitals and medical centers are providing a model for controlling costs while delivering high-quality care.
St. Francis was ranked eighth in the study. The top hospitals included:
1) Fairview Northland Regional Medical Center, Princeton; 2) Cambridge Medical Center; 3) Buffalo Hospital; 4) Naeve Hospital-Albert Lea-Mayo; 5) Fairview Lakes Health Services, Wyoming; 6) Austin Medical Center; 7) Regina Medical Center, Hastings; 8) St. Francis, Shakopee; 9) Winona Health Services; 10) Olmsted Medical Center, Rochester.
See the report at www.mn2020.org.
“Best Practices demonstrates Minnesotans don’t have to sacrifice health care quality to control medical costs,” said Minnesota 2020 Executive Director John Van Hecke. “To continue these healthy outcomes, state policymakers and health administrators must find ways to increase the number of well-trained, dedicated and caring primary care doctors, which is becoming increasingly difficult, especially in rural counties.”
The report evaluates quality of care (which includes diagnosis outcomes, mortality rates and patient satisfaction) and value, as measured by Medicare reimbursements, uncompensated care and several other factors. Overall, for the quality ranking, the margins between positions were sometimes very small, indicating Minnesota hospitals, in general, deliver high-quality health care.
Typically, smaller medical facilities that had a higher proportion of primary-care physicians to specialists came out better in both value and quality of care, said the study. The report finds that while specialists play an important role in treating and caring for those with advanced and acute illnesses, Medicare and the insurance payment structure has resulted in an increasing overreliance on specialty doctors as a first line of defense. This has led to many of the skyrocketing costs associated with medical care, said the study's author.
Recently, The Journal of the American Medical Association released a report concluding that only 2 percent of medical school students planned to pursue a career in general internal medicine. The lures of prestige and high six-figure salaries and fewer administrative duties have many young doctors continuing on toward a specialization, said the report. If the trend continues, it said, the U.S. will be short nearly 40,000 primary care doctors by 2020.
“In order to encourage a stronger primary care system and persuade more physicians to enter into general or family medicine, Medicare and U.S. insurance companies need to restructure their payment systems to reward medical centers for practicing preventive, holistic and well-coordinated medical care,” said Minnesota 2020 Graduate Health Care Policy Fellow Kyle Bauser, the report’s author. "By following this model, we could grow the dwindling number of general practitioners and increase cost efficiency and healthy outcomes.”
Minnesota typically ranks toward the top of lists in national medical and health studies, coming in as the fourth healthiest state, according to United Health Foundation’s America’s Health 2008 rankings.
The main reason Minnesotans are generally healthier is its low uninsured rate; on average more than 92 percent of Minnesotans have some type of health coverage compared to the nation's 85 percent, said the report. This also equates to more people seeing primary care doctors, it said.
Submitted by Pat Minelli.
Shakopee Valley News