Northside Medical Center, St. Francis Hospital earn 5-star ratings

Northside Medical Center has joined St. Francis Hospital in Columbus with a five-star rating from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Compare program.

That places Northside, which is owned and operated by Columbus Regional Health, and St. Francis, owned by Brentwood, Tenn.-based LifePoint Health, in the top 10 percent of hospitals nationwide. The average rating in the U.S. is three stars.

Columbus Regional Health-owned Midtown Medical Center, 710 Center St. in Columbus, has two stars. A regional trauma center, Midtown is listed “below the national average” in the areas of mortality, safety of care, patient experience and timeliness of care. It is “same as the national average” in effectiveness of care and effective use of medical imaging, while “above the national average” in readmission safety and outcomes.

The Hospital Compare program rates acute-care hospitals in several areas, including timely and effective care, complications and deaths, unplanned hospital visits, use of medical imaging, and payment and value of care. It also includes surveys of patient experiences.

The overall rating encompasses up to 57 quality measures that reflect common conditions that hospitals treat, such as heart attacks or pneumonia, Columbus Regional said. The ratings are updated each July and December.

The only service that Northside Medical Center does not offer that St. Francis Hospital does is emergency room services. But the medical center at 100 Frist Court in north Columbus is now working on that, with construction under way on the addition of a 12,000-square-foot emergency department. There also will be an additional 5,800 square feet of space that will be “shell space” to accommodate 10 more rooms for emergency department patients in the future. The project should be completed this spring.

St. Francis, located at 2122 Manchester Expressway, is a 376-bed facility that offers inpatient, outpatient and emergency room services. It is the only area hospital offering open-heart surgery. It more than 2,800 employees and 300 physicians.

The 100-bed Northside Medical Center changed its name from Hughston Hospital 2013. It has long been a hub for orthopedic surgery since opening in 1984. But it has added general surgery to the mix, including abdominal, breast and colon procedures, as well as plastic surgery. It employs about 330.

Other area hospitals with a four-star rating are Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital, 4401 River Chase Drive in Phenix City, and Wellstar West Georgia Medical Center, 1514 Vernon Road in LaGrange, Ala. East Alabama Medical Center, 2000 Pepperell Parkway in Opelika, currently has three stars.

This story was originally published January 3, 2018 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Northside Medical Center, St. Francis Hospital earn 5-star ratings."