By Michael Howell
Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital’s Home Health service recently showed up at the top of the list out of 30 agencies in Montana in a national ranking of Home Health Agencies. The rankings are based on publicly reported data downloaded from the CMS Medicare website. The data set contains agency-specific, risk-adjusted performance on 22 quality measures for over 11,000 agencies nationwide. All of the 22 quality measures were used in this analysis.
The data focuses on three measures related to patients’ ability to manage daily activities, five measures related to managing and treating patients’ pain and other symptoms, five measures related to treating wounds and preventing pressure sores, eight measures related to preventing harm, and two measures related to preventing unplanned hospital care.
Agencies are ranked based on their average performance rate for the measures reported. These rankings are presented as percentiles in the results tables. Marcus Daly Memorial HHA ranked at the top with a 97th percentile. Spectrum Home Health in Great Falls was ranked in the 96th percentile. Agencies in Kalispell and Billings ranked in the 93rd percentile. Four agencies in Helena, Kalispell, Missoula and Plains ranked in the 80 to 85th percentile. Twenty-two other agencies in the state ranked at the 76th percentile or lower.
Director and Manager of the Home Health and Hospice agencies at MDMH, Dr. Jane Hron, who has been involved in Home Health since the 1980’s, was elated to be at the top of the rankings in the state.
“We are really making a difference in patient’s lives,” said Hron.
Hron coordinates from 10 to 15 staff members in serving, on a monthly average, about 30 homebound patients.
“Our aim is to keep them from having to come back to the hospital,” said Hron.
Hron said that home health care is more intimate than hospital care in the sense that you are entering the patient’s home. She said that can make some people uncomfortable and they may show a little resistance at first.
“A lot of Montanans are very self-reliant and independent,” said Hron, “and once they realize that our aim is to keep them in their home and get them to the level that that they can care for themselves and stay out of the hospital, they find it easier to accept us in their homes.”
Hron said one key to getting such a high ranking was working together as a team. She said high rankings mean that not one of the staff are skipping any steps. They are giving each patient a thorough assessment every time and getting positive results.