Representatives from Baptist Health Medical Center paid a visit to the HSC Quorum Court Tuesday evening. Jay Quebedeaux, president of Baptist HMC Hot Spring County/Arkadelphia, presented information to members of the Court and attended visitors about the local facility’s new and existing services and performance ratings over the last year.
Quebedeaux has been in the healthcare field for over 31 years and previously served as CEO of Mena Regional Health System. He’s been in charge of the Malvern Baptist HMC operations for about nine months and has nothing but good things to say about the community and fellow staff.
“The community’s been really good, the staff has been really good, everyone I have met from the community has been great,” he said. “I appreciate the warm welcome.”
Quebedeaux started off by sharing data concerning the facility’s overall national ratings among small community hospitals. The data firm NRC Health compiles ratings from hospitals across the country, and this data showed Baptist Health Medical Center-Hot Spring County received a score of 80, which puts them in the 85th percentile.
Among facilities whose patrons were posed the question, “Would you recommend this hospital?”, Baptist Health’s Malvern facility received an impressive score of 94.4, which puts them in the 99th percentile, nationally.
Baptist HMC-HSC also earned a distinction from IBM Watson Health as one of the top 100 Rural Hospitals in America, and an Everest Award for Small Community Hospitals.
“For the ranking, hospitals were surveyed across three components: assessing hospital contributions to community health as a provider of critical services for community health and preventive care; identifying ways that hospitals contribute to community health as a community partner teaming up with local organizations to implement critical programs; and focusing on ways that hospitals promote community health through their practices as anchor institutions supporting local economic and social progress,” according to a press release from the company.
“To win an Everest Award, a hospital must not only rank in the Top 100 but also rank among the top for rate-of-improvement over five years,” as explained in a March 2018 article published online at www.healthleadersmedia.com.
“Compared to similar hospitals Baptist Health Medical Center-Hot Spring County had better results in performance indicators intended to measure clinical outcomes, operational efficiency and patient experience,” as stated from the presentation material. Quebedeaux pointed out how hard it was for facilities to achieve such a high ranking and how impressed and pleased he was with the performance of the facility and the staff.
Quebedeaux next spoke about how the facility spent its tax funds throughout the previous year. The data shows they spent approximately 26 percent of the total, or $329,719, on utilities; $333,232 on repairs & maintenance; $315.615 percent on security services; approximately 17 percent, or $220,284, on biomedical services; $23,026 on minor equipment; $19,137 on capital equipment; and $19,500 on capital-related buildings and improvements.
Read the full story in Friday’s Jan. 13 newspaper editions.