Published: July 06, 2008 12:47 am            

LUCINSKI: The survey says: We're among the best

NIAGARA FALLS — Let’s shout it from the rooftops: We’re No. 12! Or, we’re No. 73!

Those were the national rankings of the two hospitals in the Niagara Falls area when it comes to bang for the buck. We’re talking about the 2008 Hospital Value Index. It’s a rating of hospitals across America that lists the best value for the money in health care.

According to the private firm Data Advantage, LLC, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center is rated first in the state and 12th in the nation when it comes to providing high-quality, affordable health care. The survey rated 1,500 hospitals in the country’s 100 largest regions.

Stop and think of that: 12th out of 1,500. That’s in the top 1 percent. In addition, Memorial was listed as a Top 100 Best Value hospital, a Top 100 Best Kept Secret hospital and a Best in Value hospital.

And let’s not forget Mount St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston. It made the Hot 100 charts as well, coming in at No. 73 on the Hospital Value Index. In fact, health care facilities across the Niagara Falls-Buffalo region littered the Top 100, bringing our area in as having the best value in health care of any region in the nation.

The folks who work at and operate our hospitals are justifiably proud.

“It’s really a tribute to the entire hospital team — all 1,200 employees and medical staff,” said CEO Joseph Ruffolo of Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. The index ranked the hospitals on four main criteria: quality of care, efficiency of care and affordability, patient experience and reputation as measured by local public perception. For both medical facilities to come out as high as they did is, as Ruffolo put it, a tribute to all who dedicate themselves to the care of the ill in our community.

Ruffolo says the ranking will be a big help in recruiting top-flight physicians and other medical personnel to the region. “I think it’s the old cliché that the best attracts the best,” he said.

Lists and rankings like these, of course, have their detractors. They say that it all depends on what you measure; that the criteria used can skew the results. Change them a little and it could knock our hospitals down to the middle of the pack. And standards used in compiling this list are pretty subjective, relying on surveys and opinion.

But those who criticize these types of lists are usually those who don’t do well on them. The best example locally is the annual Business First ranking of the area’s public schools. Officials of the districts that grace the top of the list are all smiles. Those at or near the bottom? The survey is flawed and they don’t pay much attention to the rankings anyway.

But this is different. Even if the survey isn’t perfect; even if it has some flaws; 12th or 73rd out of 1,500 is so high on the list that even if the area hospitals were to be knocked down a bit, it would still leave them among the top values in health care in the nation.

That’s something about which all of Niagara can be proud.

Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette. His columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday.

        

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