Editor,
Rob Born on his blog, and now his supporter David Howe in his Sept. 26 letter to the editor, portray Whidbey General Hospital as a recipient of very low marks on a 2013 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid/CMS “patient satisfaction” survey, as reported in a Seattle P-I article of April 8, 2015.
The two-line reference in the P-I listed WGH as coming in at No. 45 in a “patient satisfaction” survey out of 47 Washington state hospitals.
I accessed the CMS survey online, quickly realizing that the 45th place rating was assigned by the P-I reporter — not by CMS — since CMS does not give numerical ratings to their 91 — yes 91 not 47 — contracted state hospitals.
In addition, the result of only one solitary question out of a 32-question survey was given as proof by the P-I reporter for his low rating of WGH.
How do you spell cherry picking?
What CMS does do in its survey is to list patient responses to 32 questions covering nine areas of importance for their inpatient hospital admission. It then compares the results to statewide and national averages.
What this 2013 survey reveals, which the P-I article and Mr. Born and Mr. Howe failed to get right, is that Whidbey General’s performance percentages were mostly equal to or surpassed statewide and national averages.
The only area where WGH received a significantly lower rating was in the area of inpatient “noise level.”
Surprise! Our small, inpatient, two- person rooms can be noisy and it was obviously reflected in this area of the 2013 CMS evaluation.
As we all know, this problem will be a thing of the past when our new community-approved wing is built.
On this same survey by the way, WGH got a combined 96 percent rating from its patients who said they would “probably — 24 percent — or definitely — 72 percent — recommend the hospital” even with the lower noise level rating.
These are definitely not the ratings of a hospital “in crisis” regarding “patient satisfaction” as Mr. Born and Howe would have us believe. They have done a disservice to our community by not vetting the source of their reckless accusations.
I will be voting for Georgia Gardner for Hospital Commissioner, District 2.
I trust her honesty and integrity.
Michael Ferri
Coupeville
