Fargo VA Health Care System Receives 5-Star CMS Quality Rating

Fargo, ND – Today the Fargo VA Health Care System announced that it received a 5-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This is the first time CMS has included VA facilities in their annual Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings.

The CMS uses 5 categories – mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experience, and timely and effective care – to award a quality rating for each hospital. The more stars (out of 5), the better a hospital performed on the available quality measures.

Overall, 67% of VA hospitals included in the CMS annual Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings received either 4 or 5 stars, compared to only 41% of non-VA hospitals. These findings are the latest in a series of recent evaluations showing the effectiveness of VA health care compared to non-VA health care. VA hospitals outperformed non-VA hospitals on all 10 core patient satisfaction metrics in the recent Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Star Ratings, and a recent systematic review of more than 40 peer-reviewed studies found that VA health care is consistently as good as — or better than — non-VA health care.

For more information, call the Fargo VA Public Affairs Office at (701) 239-3724.

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