Lebanon Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) recently announced that it received a five-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings and five stars from CMS' quarterly patient satisfaction review, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems (HCAHPS).

CMS Star Ratings are a rating-based system to summarize measures of health care quality from CMS Care Compare in a way that is easy to interpret for patients and caregivers, enabling them to make informed decisions about where they seek health care. Overall, Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities were more likely in the 2024 ratings to receive four or five Overall Star Ratings and less likely to receive two or three stars than non-VA facilities.

"It's our commitment that every eligible veteran not only can choose VA health care, but when they do, that they get the very best and safest care possible," said VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal. "For the second year in a row, VA care has been shown to be some of the best in the nation. We are dedicated to continuously improving as we strive toward always providing the highest quality of care to veterans."

Nationally, VA hospitals continue to perform well on both CMS' Overall Star Rating and its quarterly Patient Satisfaction Survey. In the most recent CMS Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) star ratings, 79% of VA facilities received a summary star rating of four or five stars. In this year's CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings, more than 58% of VA hospitals included received four- or five-star ratings; this is the second year VA hospitals have been included in this review.

These findings come at a time when veteran trust in VA outpatient care has reached an all-time record high of 92%, based on a survey of more than 440,000 veterans. Additionally, these findings are consistent with a recent systematic review that found that VA health care is consistently rated as being as good as - or better than - non-VA health care.

Both CMS ratings aim to improve patients' ability to make informed decisions about where they receive care. CMS awards Overall Star Ratings to hospitals based on five categories: mortality, safety of care, readmission, patient experience, and timely and effective care. CMS' HCAHPS summary star ratings combine information across 10 measures of patient experience, including staff communication and responsiveness, hospital environment, willingness to recommend the hospital, and overall hospital rating. This year's Overall Star Ratings are based on data collected between July 2019 and March 2023, and this quarter's HCAHPS star ratings are based on data collected between October 2022 and September 2023.

The VA aims to deliver timely, world-class health care to veterans. The overall rating, as well as ratings on specific quality and satisfaction measures, of local VA hospitals can be found via CMS' Care Compare tool.

For more information about the Lebanon VA Medical Center, visit http://www.va.gov/lebanon-health-care or http://www.facebook.com/VALebanon or follow the center on X, formerly Twitter, at http://www.x.com/VALebanon.