For the third straight year, Miles Memorial Hospital and St. Andrews Hospital received the top scores in their category in the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Quality-in-Sights Hospital Incentive Program.

The program, (Q-HIP) rewards hospitals for offering quality care. It measures care by analyzing data from the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other sources, including how often patients are readmitted within 30 days of their discharge, the rate of hospital infections and patient satisfaction as measured by third-party surveys.

Taken together, those data points create a picture of excellent care at Lincoln County Healthcare Hospitals. For the third year in a row, Lincoln County Healthcare hospitals offered the best care of all 25 hospitals in their category – essentially small, rural hospitals in the northeastern region of the United States. 

More important than what the Q-HIP scores say about hospital care, however,  is what they say about the ability of every part of Lincoln County Healthcare to work together to provide great care for patients, said Cindy Leavitt, Lincoln County Healthcare Senior Vice President of Hospital Operations.

“It is flow. It is communication. It is working together as a team,” Leavitt said. “We have had such great success because we have utilized our continuum of care. It is hospital care, long-term care, primary care and home health,” Leavitt said. 

It means making sure every doctor washes his or her hands every time they see a patient so infections don’t spread and it means providers in every part of the system communicate with providers in every other part of the system, so patients receive the right care at the right time. 

Lincoln County Healthcare patients have among the lowest rate of early re-admissions in Maine because nurses, doctors and discharge planners work together to ensure that when a patient leaves the hospital, they have the support they need at home, whether that means visits from a home health nurse or help making it to the grocery store.

“This is all about individuals who care about the quality of their work,” Lincoln County Healthcare President Jim Donovan said.  “Top scores are the direct result of the hard work and talent of our employees.”

Offering high quality care across the continuum has always been at the core of Lincoln County Healthcare’s goal of taking care of the whole community but as the healthcare landscape changes and resources become more scarce, it is also increasingly important for health care systems to be able to demonstrate they are providing good care through programs like Q-HIP.

Private insurance providers, including private insurer Anthem and government providers MaineCare and Medicare, increasingly tie reimbursement to quality measures. 

As Lincoln County Healthcare prepares for a future in which more patients get their care through Accountable Care Organizations, being able to offer top quality care will only become more important.

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are groups of providers who work together to care for a population of patients. The goal of an ACO is to improve the patient experience, to improve the health of the community as a whole, and to lower costs.

Instead of being rewarded based on the number of services doctors and hospitals provide, ACOs are rewarded based on their efficiency, and the health of the community they serve. 

If the providers in an ACO communicate well and offer high-quality, well-coordinated care, particularly preventative care, they spend less money on the most expensive types of care, such as emergency care, and people stay healthier and enjoy a better quality of life.

Improving care while lowering costs is a challenge but one that fits well with Lincoln County Healthcare’s values and tradition of caring for everyone in their service area.

Every provider at Lincoln County Healthcare knows they are caring for their neighbors, their family and their friends, and they are committed to doing the very best they can, said Leavitt.

“It is taking care of the community and it is very special,” she said.