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Veterans Can Now See VA Hospital Performance Data Online

VA hospitals across the country now have their internal performance score cards posted on the Department of Veterans Affairs website.

(TNS) -- Erie Veterans Affairs Medical Center patients now can see, in detail, the hospital's success rate at preventing hospital-acquired infections and scheduling medical appointments in a timely manner.

The Erie VAMC, and other VA hospitals across the country, now have their internal performance score cards posted on the Department of Veterans Affairs website, www.va.gov/qualityofcare. The first reports were published in early December and measured data that was collected between April and June 2016.

The decision to publish Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning data comes two years after a nationwide audit showed that more than 100 VA hospitals - though not the Erie VAMC - falsified or maintained secret patient waiting lists to hide long patient wait times.

"We've been using this performance tool since 2012," Erie VAMC Director John Gennaro said. "The VA is making it public to show the transparency of leadership. It's good information for veterans to know."

The initial report, which will be updated every three months, gave the Erie VAMC excellent marks for its overall care. It earned five stars, the highest number, for the second straight year.

Only 14 of the 146 VA hospitals nationwide earned five stars.

"Our five-star rating is due to the efforts of the entire staff," Gennaro said. "It's based on 28 different measures, things like infection control, outpatient care and employee satisfaction. Every service we provide has some input in this rating."

The rating confirms what many local veterans have told Erie County Councilman Jay Breneman about the Erie VAMC, that the hospital and its employees are responsive to their health needs.

"I rarely come across someone who is dissatisfied with the Erie VA hospital," said Breneman, a U.S. Army veteran. "I think these reports will keep VA facilities across the country on their toes and improve the level of care at facilities where it isn't as high as it is here in Erie."

The Erie hospital exceeded national benchmarks for the period in many of the 28 measures, including the average patient's length of stay - which was nearly a day less than the benchmark of 3.674 days - and the ratio of observed to expected in-hospital complications.

Erie VAMC's ratio was zero, and it did not have any catheter-associated urinary tract infections or central line-associated bloodstream infections during the period.

"That's the result of our staff following the rules about having gloves in place and correctly identifying the patient room where they need to gown up and wear gloves," Gennaro said. "It's also properly cleaning patient rooms during switch-overs."

The latest S.A.I.L. report also pointed to areas where the Erie hospital could improve. Its employee satisfaction marks placed it among the middle of VA hospitals in terms of overall job satisfaction, satisfaction with the organization and recommending it as a good place to work.

"I think those marks had something to do with the recent turnover in our leadership," Gennaro said. "We had a director, Mike Adelman, who had been here for 10 years, then we had nearly two years of acting directors before I started in July. I expect those marks to change in the upcoming months now that we have permanent leadership in place."

The Erie VAMC has already improved on another measure highlighted by the S.A.I.L. report: call center responsiveness. Patients who called the Erie VAMC seeking appointments waited more than three minutes for a response and more than 17 percent of callers hung up before their questions were answered.

The national benchmarks were 21 seconds and 3.7 percent, respectively.

"In October 2015, we eliminated the call center and had the clinics' clerical staffs handle those calls," Gennaro said. "It didn't work. We instituted the call center in July and the average time to answer a call is now 14 seconds and the (hang-up) rate is 0.5 percent."

Gennaro hopes area veterans and their families will look at these reports and see how well the Erie VAMC is working to provide medical care.

"It's not enough for us just to say we offer good quality and good access," Gennaro said. "We need to show them exactly what our outcomes are."

©2017 the Erie Times-News (Erie, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.