ELLSWORTH — They often struggle to operate in the black, but Maine hospitals lead the nation when it comes to delivering quality care.

The Maine Hospital Association (MHA) recently announced that on average, “Maine offers higher quality hospital care than any other state in the country, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).”

The CMS uses hospital-reported data, which is subject to CMS validation, to calculate national averages. The information is available online at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

“Maine has been very aggressive and appropriately aggressive towards raising the bar and achieving high levels of excellence, as measured by regulating agencies,” said Charlie Therrien, CEO at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth.

He added that hospitals across the state have been working with the MHA to improve quality.

The MHA based its first-in-the-nation proclamation on CMS averages in four categories: process quality, the average of Maine hospitals’ performance on 32 quality measures across four clinical areas; patient care, the average of Maine hospitals’ patients experience of care survey for 10 categories; readmission, the average rates for three clinical areas — heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia — and mortality, the average rates for the same three clinical areas.

When measuring “process quality,” higher numbers are better, and Maine’s average is 96.9, compared to a national average of 93.

Higher numbers are better when measuring “patient care,” and Maine scored 74.4, compared to 70.1 nationwide.

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