Quality and Safety
St. Joseph’s Health is committed to providing safe, quality care to every patient and family. We are committed to patient safety as a core value and strive towards the goal of zero preventable harm. Monitoring our quality and safety outcomes in the care we provide helps us to improve the way we deliver care. Each year, St. Joseph’s Health:
- Incorporates The Det Norske Veritas (DNV) National Patient Safety Goals into our care practices
- Proactively seeks new and innovative ways to provide the highest quality and safest care for our patients
As part of our continuing efforts to provide our patients and the community with accessible, accurate and honest data, we encourage you to review quality and safety information for St. Joseph’s Health on the following websites. Our goal in each of the metrics is to perform better than the national and state benchmark.
Certifications and Reviews
On a routine basis, St. Joseph’s Health welcomes surveyors from organizations into our facilities to ensure we are consistently providing the best possible experience and outcomes for our patients. These organizations, like the New York State Department of Health, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, New York State Office of Mental Health, Department of Labor, Occupational Safety Hazard Administration, Office of Inspector General, Office of Civil Right, New York State Justice Center and other regulatory agencies routinely work with hospitals to ensure all patients receive the highest quality, safest patient care. A rigorous review process is mutually beneficial and affirms the quality and safety of our care, which is always our top priority.
The Det Norske Veritas (DNV)
The DNV, an independent, not-for-profit organization, evaluates and certifies health care organizations in the United States. DNV accreditation and certification is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality and safety that reflects an organization’s commitment to meeting certain performance standards. The DNV’s comprehensive accreditation process evaluates an organization’s compliance with these standards and other accreditation requirements.
Through the DNV Hospital Accreditation, consumers have access to information about DNV-accredited health care organizations and programs throughout the United States.
In addition to how the hospital cares for heart failure and pneumonia patients, the Hospital Compare report also shows hospitals' patient satisfaction scores. To help you understand how to read these charts, below are some common questions and answers.
Safe and Healing Environment
St. Joseph’s Health is committed to providing our patients the highest quality care in a safe and healing environment with the goal of preventing patient harm. As the first hospital in Central New York to earn Magnet recognition for nursing excellence—a nationally recognized benchmark to measure patient care quality and patient safety—St. Joseph’s Health Hospital was one of the first 30 hospitals in the nation to achieve ISO 90001 certification for its quality management program.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded St. Joseph’s 3-stars for quality—the highest for a large hospital in our area; we received the highest rating among Syracuse hospitals from Healthgrades for cardiac surgery, coronary interventions, spinal surgery and surgical excellence; the highest ratings from the Society for Thoracic Surgeons for cardiac surgery; and US News and World Reports ranked St. Joseph’s Health Hospital as the #1 hospital in Syracuse, NY.
How We Measure Our Performance
Hospital quality indicators are typically a set of measures that allow a potential patient, family member or significant other to understand how well the quality and safety of care is at a hospital. These generally accepted measures assess a hospital’s clinical performance and overall patient outcomes. Virtually all US hospitals are measuring the safety and quality of care provided to patients within their organizations. The major focus is to use the measurements to promote improvements in both the delivery of care and the patient experience of care.
We share this information with all of our medical and nursing staff regularly to promote safety and quality efforts in our hospital and health system daily.
To see how our hospital measures with other local hospitals, click here. To help you understand how to read these charts, we provide answers to many common questions.