Sacred Heart About Us Quality and Safety

Quality and Safety

You and your family know it just as well as we do—healthcare quality and safety is vital. As a hospital that has been ranked among the nation’s best for inpatient satisfaction, we are proud of our high-quality care and reputation for excellent service. But we don’t stop there.

As a consumer, you need information to make sound decisions about your personal healthcare and your future. Sacred Heart Hospital would like to help. This section of the website provides you with:

an in-depth look at our best practice recognitions for quality and safety
our track-record performance
tools to research healthcare quality
CMS Star Ratings
HCAHPS Star Ratings

Patient Satisfaction

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Credentials and Accreditations

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Awards and Recognition

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Quality and Safety Measures

At Sacred Heart Hospital, we are dedicated to delivering quality healthcare. It happens thanks to our talented, accomplished staff using state-of-the-art technologies and best-in-class procedures in a warm and caring Franciscan environment.

We believe strongly in public transparency and have been a leading hospital in the state effort to publicly report performance measures. We regularly update and report our measures with reporting organizations and agencies so that you can be an informed healthcare consumer. Our performance metrics and quality reports can be found on the following sites:

CheckPoint — quality reports on Wisconsin hospitals
HealthGrades — a national database with quality reports on hospitals and physicians
Hospital Compare — a Department of Health & Human Services database on hospital quality information
PricePoint — inpatient and outpatient cost reports on Wisconsin hospitals
Quality Check — the Joint Commission’s database on hospital quality
Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality — providing performance and progress data

Safety Goals

With hundreds of patients entrusted to our care each week, we know there is no responsibility more serious than patient safety.

Every day, it’s the focus of individuals who provide care here. And together as a team throughout Sacred Heart Hospital, we share an ongoing commitment to improving care to make your stay as safe as possible.

It’s why we have carefully implemented The Joint Commission’s annual National Patient Safety Goals throughout the hospital. Learn about our accreditation and Gold Seal of Approval.

For additional information and resources, please see:

the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, helping consumers and clinicians advance excellence in healthcare
the Institute of Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit educating the healthcare community and consumers
the Partnership for Patient Safety, a patient-centered initiative to improve care across systems

Culture of Excellence

Sacred Heart Hospital has gone above and beyond the healthcare industry’s basics of making healthcare safe. We have implemented programs for sustained safety for our patients across the continuum of care.

As you might guess, a safety improvement is of little help unless it is sustained and permanent. To sustain our safety improvements, we have built a unique culture of excellence with a constant connection to our mission, values and standards. This connection helps our employees at all levels sustain quality and safety improvements. We call it hardwiring our results.

Our culture of excellence enhances safety, but only with the sustained commitment of each individual member of our hospital family. We excel at this because our ideals are embodied in our Standards & Guiding Principles: the behaviors and courtesy for conduct, work quality, attitude, leadership, organization, cooperation and service commitment to our patients. These ideals, summed up as our Core Values, create an environment with strong values and beliefs that promote behaviors which result in safe, reliable and effective care.

Clinical Outcomes

At Sacred Heart Hospital, we are constantly working to improve patient safety and quality. This is such a high priority that an entire department, the Quality Resources Department, is dedicated to continually measuring and improving our performance. The department also helps implement the latest innovations and best practices.

We make improvements through:

Major systems solutions (such as innovative new technology).
Improving processes (administrative or clinical actions focused on areas of opportunity).
Building on our constant connection to our mission, values and standards to enhance organizational excellence.

Highest Standards

When it comes to our patients, we don’t compare ourselves just to national averages. Instead, we set internal goals and constantly compare our progress with high performance hospitals in the top 10% in the nation. This strategy of comparing ourselves with the best has allowed us to improve our operational performance.

As you research and compare hospital care through the many excellent national and state public reporting groups, we want to provide you with our latest data. We believe in transparency and accountability, and we’re also proud of our consistent progress. Our goal is to provide the very best care and exceed your expectations and our own high standards.

Experience and Quality

When it comes to treating a particular disease, experience is an important indicator of quality. Studies show better results for physicians/hospitals that treat a high number of patients for a particular disease and perform large numbers of procedures/surgeries to treat it.

Several independent organizations across the country make it their job to assess and rate quality in healthcare. The following resources will help you learn how Sacred Heart Hospital measures up for experience and quality:

American Hospital Association (AHA) Quality Center provides several resources for evaluating and comparing hospital quality and making informed decisions.
Hospital Compare offers data from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
The Joint Commission, an independent not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits more than 16,000 healthcare organizations in the United States, provides an important Quality Check resource.

Disclaimer

Please remember that medical information provided by Sacred Heart Hospital, in the absence of a visit with a healthcare professional, must be considered as an educational service only.

Our website is not designed to replace a physician’s independent judgment about the appropriateness or risks of a procedure for a given patient. As always, we will do our best to provide you with information that will help you and your loved ones make healthcare decisions.