In September, the Board of Trustees met and approved MRH’s 2021 Organizational Goals and Strategic Plan. The number one priority for 2021 is to begin our journey toward becoming a 4-Star Hospital. Our staff has identified a theme for this journey, which is “Our Family Caring For Yours.”

For several months prior to this approval, the Board talked about what is needed to move our organization from good to great including improving our billing, working on our customer service, increasing workforce engagement and improving morale. The Board believes that all of these tie together with the mission to become a 4-Star Hospital.

If we are going to accomplish a priority as big as becoming a 4-Star Hospital, we need to become aligned and focused on the mission at hand: Become a 4-Star Hospital.

You might be wondering why this is so important. Here are a couple of reasons why I think it’s important:

• I believe at MRH we have the staff, physicians and providers and services to provide top-notch care. In fact, we already do provide top-notch care, and we want the Star Rating to emphasize this fact.
• The Star Rating is calculated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid based upon data from a variety of sources. It’s unbiased and it’s public. If we are a 4-Star Hospital, anyone who looks up our hospital will see that we are ranked near the top for quality.

You might still be wondering why we are turning our attention to becoming a 4-Star Hospital. Recently, I shared with staff that in the not too distant past, hospitals and healthcare systems spent no time, energy or money on marketing their services to the community. People just went to the doctors and hospitals that were closest to them.

However, in the past 15 years, this has changed drastically. Patients are no longer “just” patients, they are customers. Our customers no longer “just” go to the nearest location, they shop around. They make choices based on a number of factors including cost, service, quality and convenience.

So, what can we do to compete? We have convenience on our side, and we are working to compete on cost and service. Now we must turn our attention to quality. I know that we have the quality to compete, but we need it to be reflected publicly and by an unbiased entity. Here’s where our 4-Star Hospital Campaign comes in.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services compiles data from a variety of sources. In a nutshell, the star rating measures how well hospitals treat common conditions like heart attacks and pneumonia. The star-rating is a comparison to other hospitals’ performance in the United States.

Currently, MRH has a 3-star rating, which is one of the most common ratings. If you want to read a more detailed explanation, you can click here.

MRH is embarking on this journey because we want everyone who chooses to come to MRH for care to be assured that we are always striving for high quality and best outcomes.

Sincerely,
Andrew J. Daniels, MHA, FACHE
Chief Executive Officer