Hospital Wins Best Overall Performer and Exceeding Customer Expectations

Cary Medical Center in Caribou has been recognized by Avatar Solutions, a leading provider of Patient, CAHPS, Employee and Physician Surveys. The hospital received the ‘Overall Best Performer Award’ and the ‘Exceeding Patient Expectations Award’, highlighting its consistent dedication to providing a high-quality patient experience. Avatar Senior Vice-President, Lynn Ehrmantraut, said that hospitals across the country are focusing on the patient experience.

“This year has proven to be a banner year for client efforts around patient experience”, said Ehrmantraut.  “The Avatar awards offer an opportunity to highlight each award-winning organization’s continuous drive to keep patients and staff at the center of their focus for improvement – in delivering on a fantastic patient experience and creating great places to work and practice medicine. We wish to sincerely congratulate all of our award winners”.

This is the 5th year in a row that Cary has received the ‘Overall Best Performer Award’ and the 10th consecutive year that the hospital has ‘Exceeded Patient Expectations’. Fewer than 2% of the 800 facilities served by Avatar Solutions have ever achieved this level of recognition in the history of the company. According to Cary CEO, Kris Doody, RN, the consistency of the awards means that high performance has become a ‘way of life’ at Cary.

“Performing at this award winning level year after year means that the systems we have put in place, the expectations of our staff, and our focus on patients and families have become the foundation of our culture”, said Doody. “We are blessed with an extraordinary staff at virtually every level of the organization and they just keep raising the bar”.

The Best Overall Performer Award goes to the top facilities in Avatar’s national database with the highest combined score for Inpatient, Outpatient, Emergency Department, and Ambulatory Surgery. This award recognizes high performing facilities that demonstrate consistency of experiences by patient type throughout the organization.

The award for Exceeding Patient Expectations goes to the facilities whose overall score exceeds expectations for whichever patient types they are currently serving. The award is based on the 3 critical survey items measuring patient expectation about quality of care, reliability, and customization before the visit. This data provides organizations with an additional benchmark to compare actual performance to patient expectations. Shawn Anderson, Chief Operating Officer at Cary Medical Center, said that exceeding patient expectations becomes more of a challenge every year but that hospital staff has been equal to the task.

“When you are consistently winning awards for quality and patient experience you have to go above and beyond to exceed a level of care that patients have come to expect”, said Anderson, who manages the hospital’s patient survey process. “Our Cary team has a tradition of compassionate and personal care which goes beyond a job and becomes more of a ‘calling’ to serve. The Avatar recognition is based on what our patients are saying about us. This means a great deal to our staff and reinforces this passion towards excellence.”