For the eighth straight year, CHI Memorial has been named a Best Regional Hospital by U.S. News and World Report. On the list of Best Hospitals in Tennessee, CHI Memorial is tied for number four with University of Tennessee Medical Center and Parkwood Medical Center in Knoxville. Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville is ranked number one in the state. Only 10 of Tennessee’s 129 hospitals meet U.S. News’ standards and are ranked. In addition, CHI Memorial received the number one ranking for hospitals in Chattanooga, officials said.
CHI Memorial also received a "high performing" rating in 11 surgical procedures and chronic conditions evaluated by U.S. News: abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, COPD, colon cancer surgery, heart attack, heart bypass surgery, heart failure, hip replacement, kidney failure, knee replacement, lung cancer surgery and prostate cancer surgery.
“The past two years have been challenging, and this recognition is a testament to our staff’s unwavering dedication to providing high quality health care, even amidst the difficulties that came with the pandemic,” shared Janelle Reilly, market CEO, CHI Memorial. “I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our physicians, nurses, staff, and volunteers for always putting our patients at the forefront and living out our mission to make the healing presence of God known in our world by improving the health of the people we serve.”
The U.S. News Best Hospitals analysis reviews hospitals' performance in adult and pediatric clinical specialties, procedures and conditions. Scores are based on several measures, such as survival rates, patient experience, level of nursing care, and how successfully each hospital helps patients get back home. The Best Hospitals procedure and condition ratings focus on specific and more commonly required individual procedures and conditions, rather than on broader specialties like orthopedics and cardiology. The goal is to evaluate how well hospitals perform in each procedure or condition with the full range of patients. The evaluation of CHI Memorial Hospital also includes data from CHI Memorial Hospital Hixson.
Outcome and volume measures this year included data from the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. To adjust for the pandemic's varied impact on different hospitals, cases were excluded from outcome measures if they occurred during March 2020, if they involved a diagnosis of COVID-19 or if they occurred during a month in which the share of the hospital’s inpatients who had COVID-19 exceeded either 15 percent or the national average among Medicare beneficiaries for that time period, whichever was lower.