Community Memorial Hospital : Hamilton NY

Community Memorial Hospital has earned a HealthGrades Joint Replacement Excellence Award™ for the third consecutive year, a highly coveted national quality award.

Community Memorial is also ranked among the top ten New York State hospitals for joint replacement surgery and among the top ten percent of hospitals nationwide, also for the third consecutive year.

Finally, the hospital has earned a 5-Star rating for joint replacement surgery for the fourth year in a row. Patients treated at 5-star hospitals are 80 percent less likely to experience major complications, according to HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization. Its annual study evaluates objective patient outcomes in the nation's 5,000 hospitals.

"This recognition shines a national spotlight on our ongoing efforts over many years," said Community Memorial Hospital President and CEO David W. Felton. "The surgeons of Hamilton Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, the Medical Staff and hospital employees have worked together to create an elite institution in Upstate New York with the highest levels of professionalism and caring."

The HealthGrades study, the largest annual report of its kind, analyzed patient outcomes in nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from 5,000 hospitals over the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Among the findings related to inhospital complications in this year's study are:

• Across all procedures in which complications were studied, there was a 79.69 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more inhospital complications in a 5-star rated hospital compared to a 1-star rated hospital.
• Across all procedures studied, there was a 61.22 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more inhospital complications in a 5-star rated hospital compared to the U.S. hospital average.
• If all hospitals performed at the level of a 5-star rated hospital, 110,687 orthopedic inhospital complications may have been avoided among Medicare patients over the three years studied.

"Dr. Ivan Gowan deserves special commendation for putting together a group of surgeons that is among the finest in New York State, if not the country," added Felton. "Not only do the partners of Hamilton Orthopaedic Surgery provide the highest quality but they are loyal members of the Community Memorial Medical Staff and outstanding citizens of our community."

The new 2010 HealthGrades hospital ratings were posted at www.healthgrades.com, HealthGrades' public Web site.
Cutline: Dr. Ivan Gowan leads a Community Memorial Hospital surgical team during hip replacement surgery.

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