El Paso VA Hospital Improves, still has one star rating
The VA released its end of fiscal year 2018 hospital star ratings Wednesday, and while the El Paso VA saw improvements, it still remains at a one star rating.
“There’s no doubt that there’s still plenty of work to do, but I’m proud of our employees, who work tirelessly to move VA in the right direction for Veterans and taxpayers,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.
The star designation is used to identify the best practices of top performing VA hospitals and share them across the whole VA health care system.
“The El Paso VA health care system has shown marked improvement in most areas. We are actually in the Top 5 in the country for our ‘Call Responsiveness’ and ‘Mental Health Population Coverage’ metrics,” said Mr. Michael Amaral, Director of the El Paso VAHCS.
“Our patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction ratings continue to improve as well. We still have work to do. Like I have always said, I don’t particularly care about the Star Rating; I care about the metrics that lead up to that rating and the processes that drive those metrics.”
The VA says that 66 percent of VA Medical Centers have improved in overall quality in the third quarter. Areas where VA-wide improvement initiatives were put in place saw the largest gains in quality.
Eight medical centers that were placed under the Strategic Action for Transformation program in January 2018 are no longer considered high risk and 80 percent saw measurable improvements.
