National Study Ranks Danbury Hospital ‘Most Preferred’

DANBURY — National Research Corporation (NRC), an industry leader in health care performance measurement and improvement, recently named Danbury Hospital as one of the most preferred hospitals by consumers for overall quality and image in western Connecticut.

The findings were published in NCR’s HealthCare Market Guide 2006-7, following an annual study of 200,000 households representing 450,000 covered lives. Widely known as offering the nation’s most comprehensive consumer assessment of the health care industry, the NRC provides name-specific consumer ratings for more than 3,000 hospitals and more than 800 health plans nationwide.

To allow meaningful comparison, local, state, and national benchmarks are provided, along with preference ratings, patient satisfaction, satisfaction with access, health care utilization patterns, and a host of other measures.

Frank J. Kelly, president and CEO, Danbury Hospital and Danbury Health Systems, said, the staff was very pleased to be a recipient of the Consumer Choice Award.

“Assessing the quality of health care is critical to performance improvement efforts,” Mr Kelly said. “We value independent systems and organizations that serve to help leading hospitals and health care systems measure performance. We particularly value the perceptions of those we serve. In an atmosphere where patients are becoming well-informed about health care issues and seek to compare quality, we are proud to be ranked number one by those we serve.”

For more than ten years, NRC has presented annually the Consumer Choice Awards for the most-preferred hospitals on quality and image in more than 180 US markets. Healthcare Market Guide Director Tracy Castro explained that the results allow hospitals to track changes in their organization and the impact on consumer and patient perceptions.

 “Our data allows hospitals to trend and track changes in their market over time. They can see how they have improved and how their competitors have improved. They also can use the data to gauge the impact of new facilities that have opened, and the study can help clients see the effect that this has on their hospital and all providers as a whole,” Ms Castro said.