Staff of the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff recently learned they retained a four out of five star rating in quality and efficiency over the past year as well as demonstrated measurable improvements in 76 percent of all measures.
"The VA has a system to internally review and benchmark their quality, employee satisfaction, access to care and efficiency called Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning (SAIL)," John J. Pershing Medical Center Director Dr. Patricia Hall said. "It is a tool that analyzes 29 measures grouped into 10 domains, nine of which are quality."
Some of the areas measured include patient experience, turnover rate, infection and death rates, wait times, readmissions and instances of avoidable complications.
While the John J. Pershing VA has received a four star rating over the past couple years, Hall said the VA must continually improve to retain its rating since the hospitals are graded on a bell curve from data received quarterly.
"The curve becomes tighter as everyone gets better," Hall said. "To stay consistently at a four star rating for a small hospital like us, I'm pretty proud."
The John J. Pershing VA received some of the best numbers in the area when compared to VA medical centers in St. Louis, Columbia and Little Rock, Ark.
According to Hall, less than 39 of the 129 VA facilities can be in the top with four or five star ratings.
Areas the VA is particularly proud of where improvements were made, Hall said, include RN turnover, reduced wait times in speciality care, primary care, mental health and improved primary care processes that have led to a decrease in illnesses resulting in hospital admissions.
Congestive heart failure and COPD were also big areas for the John J. Pershing VA to improve upon. Hall said adding a respiratory therapist to teach early intervention seems to have "really helped."
"We are definitely not done with improving," Hall said. "This year we will continue our current efforts, but strengthen our focus on access and the overall veteran experience for all veterans, but especially our female veterans."
Hall explained currently only 5 percent of veterans served at John J. Pershing VA are females and of those eligible females veterans, only 34 percent are receiving care at the VA.
As a way to improve services to be more attractive to female veterans, the John J. Pershing VA is currently in the process of working to increase the number of female care providers, improving the provider expertise in specific women veteran needs and creating a space just for women healthcare.
Hall credits the "incredibly dedicated" staff at the VA for keeping the quality of care high for veterans.
"Every VA is working to improve their quality," Hall said. "We are all on this journey together."
To keep progression in all areas, Hall also added the John J. Pershing VA has created an environment where it is acceptable for staff to admit they need help in areas to become better. Through the preliminary education department, staff are able to utilize learning opportunities where teams can try something and if it does not work, they can try something different.
"I'm proud of where we are," Hall said. "I also know we don't do everything right and I want to hear where we can improve."
She went on to say the community is supportive of the VA and when something can be improved on, encouragement is received to better the VA from the partnerships with other healthcare providers and citizens.
The release of the SAIL ratings come as a part of Secretary Shulkin's efforts for VA transparency.
"The VA is striving to continuously improve the transparency of our healthcare delivery system," Hall said. "Our data is available on the internet. This is extremely unusual for the healthcare industry and we are proud to be leaders in providing this publicly."
The data can be found at www.accesstocare.va.gov. Hall added it's the VA's responsibility to the taxpayers to let them know where their money is going.
"We need to be a transparent organization for our veterans of America," she said.