Hunterdon Medical Center Ranks High On Federal Hospital Quality Website

Published May 20, 2008

The United States Department of Health and Human Services launched The Hospital Compare website, www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.  The Hospital Compare website shows how often hospitals provide all of the care that is recommended for patients being treated for a heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia or patients having surgery.  Hunterdon Medical Center voluntarily participates in this program. 

"This website looks at  how often a hospital complies with the National Quality Measures, a reflection of what is the right treatment, at the right time, for a particular diagnosis," explained Robert Pickoff, M.D., MMM, Chief Medical Officer at Hunterdon Medical Center.   "For each of these measures, hospitals are compared to both the average for their state as well as the average across the country.  We are pleased that the care at Hunterdon Medical Center ranked either equal to or higher than the care across the country and in some instances reflected best practice."added Dr. Pickoff.  For example, while the national average was 93%, Hunterdon Medical Center achieved 100% compliance for administering aspirin to heart attack patients upon arrival.  This is important because chewing an aspirin as soon as symptoms of a heart attack begin may help reduce the severity of the attack.  
 
"Measuring the quality of medical care is an invaluable tool in improving care. This is, therefore, one of the major goals of Hospital Compare, that is, to make useable information available that will help hospitals, physicians, nurses and other caregivers improve what we do," stated Dr. Pickoff.  Dr. Pickoff added, "We encourage consumers to look at the information available on the website, but to talk to their physicians about the variety of factors that can have an impact on the decision of where a patient should go for care."