Heathgrades Excellence Award

Washington Health System Achieves Healthgrades 2020 Labor and Delivery Excellence Award™

Washington Health System (WHS) is excited to announced that it is a recipient of Healthgrades 2020 Labor and Delivery Excellence Award™. This distinction places the WHS Care Center for Family Birth and Women’s Health in the top 10% of all hospitals evaluated in the nation and recognizes the exceptional care of mothers during and after labor and delivery, according to Healthgrades, the leading resource that connects consumers, physicians and health systems.

“Today, expectant parents are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of hospital quality and understand that it needs to play a factor in selecting where to deliver their baby,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Healthgrades. “The 2020 Labor and Delivery Excellence Award recognizes those hospitals that provide high quality care for mothers during labor and delivery, so parents can have confidence in their decision.”

To help consumers evaluate and compare hospital performance in labor and delivery, Healthgrades analyzed patient outcomes data for virtually every hospital in each of the 16 states that provide all-payer state data for years 2016 through 2018. Healthgrades found that the variation in hospital performance makes a significant difference in terms of clinical outcomes:

  • From 2016 through 2018, if all hospitals included in the analysis performed similarly to those that received the Healthgrades Labor and Delivery Excellence Award, 124,867 patients with complications could have potentially been avoided *.
  • From 2016 through 2018, patients treated in hospitals receiving the Healthgrades Labor and Delivery Excellence Award had, on average, a 40% lower risk of experiencing a complication while in the hospital than if they were treated in hospitals that did not receive the award*.

“I’m so proud of our labor and delivery team at WHS,” said Kathryn Simons, MD, OB/GYN Division Chair and practicing physician with Washington Health System.  “Not only do we have top-rated, exceptional care, but our newly renovated unit called the CARE Center for Family Birth and Women’s health was customized with our patients’ needs in mind.”

WHS completed its renovations to the CARE Center for Family Birth and Women’s Health in spring of 2020.  The new unit was built with plenty of extra room for visiting families (visitation is currently limited due to COVID), large spacious and modern bathrooms for mom and partner to use, blue tooth speaker access in every birthing room and so much more.

The new unit also has a newly renovated level 2 special care nursey with a team of neonatal resuscitation professionals that are present at every birth.

WHS also received the healthgrades Five-Star distinction for Vaginal Delivery, 6 Years in a row (2015-2020) as well as the Five-Star distinction for C-Section Delivery, 2 years in a row (2019-2020).

View Healthgrades hospital quality awards and methodologies.

Learn more about how hospitals partner with Healthgrades.

*  Statistics are based on Healthgrades’ analysis of all-payer data for years 2016 through 2018 and represent 3-year estimates for patients in 16 states for which all-payer data was made available.