New Hanover Regional Medical Center recently announced an industry award and an advancement in patient care.
 
NHRMC has once again been named as a HealthStrong Hospital by iVantage Health Analytics, the company announced in a press release. For the second year in a row, the hospital was given the award after ranking highly under the iVantage Hospital Strength Index.
 
The Hospital Strength Index is distinctive in that it ranks hospitals based on data from public sources such as Medicare Cost Reports, Medicare claims data and Hospital Compare. This data is then categorized into more than 60 individual metrics, organized into three major categories and 10 pillars “to derive a single strength overall rating for each facility,” the release stated.
 
“We are very proud that our efforts to maintain high quality care for our patients while finding ways to improve efficiency are being recognized,” Jack Barto, president and CEO at NHRMC, said in a statement.
 
This announcement comes shortly after NHRMC’s Critical Care Transport Service, AirLink/VitaLink, became the first emergency medical services agency in the country that the College of American Pathologists (CAP) has accredited as a point-of-care testing lab.
 
In its accreditation, CAP, which bills itself as the world’s largest association made up exclusively of board-certified pathologists, recognized NHRMC’s Critical Care Transport teams for “achieving the highest standard of excellence in performing certain blood tests while transporting a patient to definitive care,” the release stated.
 
“This testing enables us to identify serious complications in order to intervene and adjust the care of the patient in the most critical situations,” Kevin Collopy, education coordinator with NHRMC AirLink/VitaLink Critical Care Transport Service, said in the release. “This CAP accreditation demonstrates that we provide the same quality of care that patients are used to from NHRMC’s laboratory services.”