At first glance one might think a top 10 rating for our local hospital system would be a good thing but let's look at this a different way.
That's #8 in North Carolina. And it includes "Moses H. Cone, Wesley Long and Women’s Hospitals in Greensboro and Annie Penn Hospital in Reidsville." Does it not also include Alamance Regional also owned by Cone? Med Center High Point? Med Center Kernersville? The News & Record article doesn't say.
And doesn't the same standards of care apply to the hundreds of thousands of patients treated by Cone owned practices of the Triad Healthcare Network, Kernodle, Lebraur or any of almost 100 locations across the Piedmont.
In a state with 100 counties and 145 hospitals-- most of them quite small, no bigger than what we here in Greensboro consider to be a clinic-- achieving a top 10 ranking should be quite easy for the only hospital system in Greensboro, Alamance County and Rockingham County.
Cone was tied for 8th place with Winston-Salem's Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center but Forsyth goes head to head with Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center which is ranked #2 in North Carolina. Where might Cone Hospital be if patients were comparing it to Wake Forest or #1 Duke University Hospital.
And what was even more interesting about the study, while it rated hospitals state wide, in every metro area except Greensboro/Winston Salem there was also a Metro Ranking that showed how hospitals stood against each other locally.
Charlotte
Raliegh-Durham
So you tell me, is #8 looking so good now? In the 3rd largest city in North Carolina no less than 3rd place should be considered acceptable and if the board of directors of Cone Hospital were to have concentrated their efforts on medicine instead of downtown performing arts centers, padding their own pockets and real estate development it could have been achieved.
If you really want a good grasp on how poorly Cone performed look at the hospitals that beat Cone-- some of which you've probably never heard of.
