Community Memorial Hospital has received the HealthGrades 2009 Joint Replacement Excellence Award™, the second consecutive year it has achieved national recognition for the quality of its orthopedic care. HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings company, also announced that Community Memorial has earned top five-star ratings for joint replacement surgery, which includes total knee and total hip replacement.

“We have probably the best orthopedic surgeons in the country,” said Hospital President and CEO David W. Felton, referring to the partners of Hamilton Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, “and we have an outstanding team, from our OR staff right through every department in the hospital. The Medical Staff and our employees are committed to our patients and dedicated to providing quality healthcare. A five-star rating means our patients can expect good outcomes and we earn those stars through teamwork and always doing our best for our patients.”

For the third year in a row, Community Memorial achieved five-star ratings for joint replacement and total knee replacement. The hospital also earned a five-star rating again for total hip replacement. Community Memorial ranks among the top five hospitals in New York State and is in the top ten percent of hospitals nationwide for joint replacement.

“The operating room staff is better than it has ever been,” said Orthopedic Surgeon Ivan Gowan, MD. Indeed, hospital-wide departments have helped earn the five-star rating by always striving to meet the needs of patients.

As part of the nation’s most comprehensive, independent analysis of hospital quality, HealthGrades found that patients treated at five-star rated hospitals for nine common procedures are 47 percent less likely to experience a major complication, such as post-operative infections or heart conditions, which can lengthen their hospital stay and increase costs.

In developing its 2009 healthcare quality ratings, HealthGrades analyzed more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records from 2005 to 2007 at the nation’s approximately 5,000 non-federal hospitals. On its Web site, www.healthgrades.com, HealthGrades offers consumers free quality ratings of 27 procedures and treatments. The Web site is designed so that consumers can easily compare patient outcomes at their local hospitals for procedures ranging from total knee surgery to cardiac bypass surgery.