U.S. News and World Report Names St. Patrick’s Best in Montana

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Once again, the prestigious U.S. News and World Report has named Missoula’s Providence St. Patrick Hospital as the best medical facility in the state.

I spoke with Dr. James McKay, Chief Medical Officer at Providence St. Patrick Hospital about the distinction.

U.S. News and World Report names St. Pat's as Montana's Best Hospital

“What they look at for this particular award goes across 15 different specialties and 20 different procedures and conditions, and really just looks at outcomes and safety and quality in those particular areas, and that's how they do their ranking,” began McKay. “Other rankings are different. For instance, we've also just received another five-star rating from CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), which is the highest rating. I think we have about 15 of those in a row. That particular measurement looks at 46 different individual measures in five different areas.”

Dr. McKay said St Patrick Hospital is perhaps best known for its cardiac care, but has many other areas of expertise.

Dr. McKay said Cardiac Care is A Main Focus at St. Patrick Hospital

“We’re focused a lot, of course, on heart disease; how we treat heart attacks and aortic valve surgery and bypass surgery and what's called structural heart treatment, where you basically do surgery on the heart from outside the body, going through vessels. We also have very high marks for our spine surgery, for our stroke treatment, and then for a lot of our orthopedic work like hip fractures, hip replacement, knee replacement, as well as medical conditions like pneumonia and kidney failure.”

McKay said St. Pat’s is a truly complete medical center.

“You can't really look at just individual departments quite honestly,” he said. “To stay in this kind of performance over time, it really takes the whole hospital. We're really blessed to have really well trained high quality nurses, and advanced practice providers and physicians who work here. But it really takes a lot more than that. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that allows us to achieve this performance.”

He Believes St. Pat's is the Best in the Providence Organization

McKay went on a say he believes St. Patrick Hospital is the best in the entire Providence group.

“There are 52 hospitals within Providence, and some of them are very high performing, but in terms of consistent high performance with recognitions like five-star ratings from CMS and top hospitals and states, we're really at the top of the pack,” he said. “Out of those 52 hospitals which go from Alaska down to Texas, we are often the number one hospital in many of our metrics.”