Rockville General gets poor marks
Aug. 12—VERNON — Rockville General Hospital has been rated two stars out of a possible five by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to a July report from the federal agency.
The rating summarizes information on various aspects of hospital quality into one single star rating, according to the report. The five aspects of quality measured include mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experience, and timely and effective care.
The overall rating shows how well a hospital performs on these quality measures compared to other hospitals in the country, the report states.
According to the report, under the timely and effective care category, Rockville General performed worse than the national average for the average time a patient spends in the emergency department before leaving. They were also lower than the national average on the percentage of workers vaccinated against the flu.
However, the hospital met the national average in best practices for follow-up colonoscopies, and performed better than the national average in safe CT scans.
And the hospital fared better in the number of patients who leave the emergency room without being seen by a doctor, at 1% as opposed to the national 2% average.
In the mortality category, the percentage of deaths for COPD patients and heart failure patients is the same as the national average, according to the report. Information regarding death rates for other serious diseases, as well as infection and surgery complication rates, is listed as "not available."
In the readmission category, the hospital's overall rate of patient readmission after discharge is also not given. However, readmission rates for COPD and heart failure patients are listed as no different than the national average, at 19.6% and 23.2%, respectively. Information on readmission rates for other diseases and services are not provided.
The report also includes information about cost for heart failure and pneumonia patients, listed as $18,063 and $18,233, respectively. Both of these figures are listed as the same as the national average for payments in these categories.
Vernon Town Administrator Michael Purcaro said that he thinks the two star rating is due to a lack of information provided by Rockville General, and added that this may have been because the pandemic impacted the availability of many of the hospital's services.
"What's wrong here is that there wasn't enough [data] to give them anything higher," Purcaro said, adding that in his former role as Chief Administrative Officer for the state's Department of Public Health, he often saw that a lack of data in similar reports meant that services were not available.
Purcaro said he expects the federal agency's next report on the hospital will show a better rating, as they would likely have more services available and would be able to report more data.
He also added that for most of the services for which the hospital was able to provide data, they either met or exceeded national standards, which he thought was a "good indicator."
Representatives from Prospect ECHN, which owns Rockville General, did not respond to repeated attempts for comment.
The for-profit, California-based company also owns Manchester Memorial Hospital, which netted a four-star rating in the federal report.
The same report also gave Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford and St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford a four-star rating. Both are owned by Trinity Healthcare of New England.
Ben covers Vernon and Stafford for the Journal Inquirer.