Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Earns Top Five-Star Quality Rating from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

January 29, 2020

Cheyenne, WY—Cheyenne Regional Medical Center officials announced today that the hospital has earned a top five-star overall quality rating from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

According to CMS, the overall hospital rating shows how well each hospital performed, on average, compared to other hospitals in the United States. The rating ranges from one to five stars, with five being the highest. The most common overall hospital rating is three or four stars.

About 4,500 hospitals nationwide are rated, with the ratings and other quality results posted on the CMS website Hospital Compare. Only 407 hospitals received five stars in this most recent ratings period.

“At Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, our mission is to inspire great health. Being rated by CMS as a five-star hospital is a significant achievement that demonstrates our commitment to providing exceptional care and helping our community achieve better health,” CRMC President and Chief Executive Officer Timothy Thornell said. “When combined with our other recent quality awards, this rating indicates that our hospital and health system are providing high value care to our community. This recognition is something that not only our employees and medical staff, but our entire community should all be extremely proud of.”

CMS reviews more than 50 quality measures grouped into seven categories to evaluate hospitals. The categories that are the most heavily weighted are for mortality, safety of care, readmissions and patient experience. CRMC scored above national rates for preventing mortality as well as for safety and readmissions.

“Preventing unexpected mortalities is a major reason why our hospital was rated significantly better than the national average in this area,” CRMC Data Management Supervisor Eric Dalton said. “Those deaths that do occur are primarily because of long-term chronic conditions or for traumatic deaths such as from motor vehicle accidents.”

Another reason for the high rating in this area is because CRMC provides compassionate, comprehensive and well-coordinated care for patients who are facing the end of life.

“We partner with patients and families to ease their suffering and ensure that we respect their wishes for end-of-life care to include the appropriate settings such as in-home care and the Davis Hospice Center,” Dalton said.

Reducing hospital readmissions is another major focus when CMS evaluates hospitals.

“One reason the federal government wants to prevent readmissions is because it reduces healthcare costs across the board, and federal taxpayers are our largest insurer through Medicare and Medicaid,” Dalton said. “The government also wants hospitals to provide well-coordinated, comprehensive care for patients during and after a hospital stay.  Repeated hospital visits disrupt the lives of patients and families.”

Home health and other post-discharge programs at CRMC help ensure that patients receive the care they need after their hospital stay.

Another major area where CRMC exceeded the national average was for its safety of care. Safety of care falls primarily into two categories: hospital-acquired infections and complications arising from surgical procedures. “CRMC has excelled in both of these areas for a number of years,” Dalton said.

“This five-star CMS rating reflects the closely monitored, quality-driven performance improvement work that has taken place at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center over the past few years,” CRMC Chief Medical Officer Jeff Chapman, MD, said. “I want to thank our employees and all the providers at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center for providing the high level of comprehensive care that has resulted in this top national rating, which is the third major recognition that our hospital has received over the past year.”

CRMC was also recognized by Healthgrades, a national healthcare quality ratings organization, as one of the top 250 hospitals in the nation for 2019 and one of the top 100 hospitals in the nation for general surgery for 2020.