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George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center Receives Five Stars in independent, nationwide health care quality review

PRESS RELEASE

September 9, 2024

Salt Lake City , UT — Today, George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center announced that it received a five-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings and a four-star rating from CMS’ quarterly patient satisfaction review.

“Our team is incredibly proud of this recognition,” said Dr. Angela Williams, executive director of the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System. “These ratings reflect our unwavering commitment to providing Veterans with the highest standards of care when they choose VA.”

Nationally, VA hospitals continue to outperform non-VA hospitals on both CMS’ Overall Star Rating and their quarterly patient satisfaction survey:

  • Patient Satisfaction Survey: VA outperformed non-VA hospitals in the most recent CMS Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) star ratings, with 79% of VA facilities receiving a summary star rating of 4 or 5 stars compared to 40% of non-VA hospitals. This represents the ninth consecutive quarter in which VA facilities have outperformed non-VA counterparts.
  • Hospital Quality Ratings: In this year’s CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings, more than 58% of VA hospitals included received 4- or 5-star ratings compared to 40% of non-VA hospitals. This is only the second year VA hospitals have been included in this review, and VA has outperformed non-VA health care in both years.

These findings come at a time when Veteran trust in VA outpatient care has reached an all-time record high of 92%, based on a survey of more than 440,000 Veterans. Additionally, these findings are consistent with a recent systematic review that found that VA health care is consistently as good as — or better than — non-VA health care.

Both CMS ratings aim to improve patients’ ability to make informed decisions about where they receive care. CMS awards Overall Star Ratings to hospitals based on five categories: mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experience, and timely and effective care. CMS’ HCAHPS summary star ratings combine information across ten measures of patient experience, including staff communication and responsiveness, hospital environment, willingness to recommend the hospital, and overall hospital rating. This year’s Overall Star Ratings are based on data collected between July 2019 and March 2023, and this quarter’s HCAHPS star ratings are based on data collected between October 2022 and September 2023.

VA is committed to delivering the timely, world-class health care Veterans deserve and will stop at nothing less. The overall rating — as well as ratings on specific quality and satisfaction measures — of your local VA hospital can be found via CMS’ Care Compare tool.

Our health care system consists of the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah and 10 community clinics across Utah, Idaho and Nevada. We provide health care to over 70,000 eligible Veterans across 125,000 square miles of the intermountain west.

For more information contact: Jeremy Laird, Chief of Communications, VA Salt Lake City HCS, jeremy.laird@va.gov.

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