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Our local hospital plays an important role in our surrounding communities. That is made clear by the fact that our hospital has consistently been given high ratings on industry standards.
Leapfrog is an organization which focuses on patient safety. It surveys hospitals nationally twice a year with the goal of helping consumers make wise choices of where they seek hospital care. The higher the ranking, the less chance there is of patients dying from preventable safety practices. It has been established by Leapfrog analysis that lax safety standards harm 1 in 4 patients.
In recent survey ranking 111 Illinois hospitals, approximately 1/3 received an “A” rating, our hospital among them. Our hospital has earned 3 A’s in a row. If the Fall ‘25 rating is also an “A”, it will be only 1 out of 8 hospitals able to attain that recognition.
It makes an observer’s head swim as they try to figure out why the powers to be in Peoria are ready to cast us aside, particularly when one looks at the ratings by Leapfrog for other OSF facilities listed on the 39/80 corridor. I am disturbed to see ratings like Bloomington “B,” Dixon “D,” Rockford “B,” and Peoria “C,” all of which help illustrate that our hospital is stellar in performance within the OSF corporation.
Chartis is widely considered as the standard bearer in the industry for assessing rural and critical access hospitals. They gave our hospital the distinction of being rated among the top 100 rural hospitals in the entire United States! Drilling deeper, one finds that only 3 hospitals in Illinois received that recognition, an honor that we have earned several times since the 90’s.
I happen to think that we have a stellar hospital sitting on a beautiful campus that has served Ottawa and surrounding communities well since early 1970’s. It has been fiscally responsible and has delivered services recognized by independent agencies as being high quality. We do not deserve to be treated so shabbily by OSF.
Peg Reagan
Citizens for Healthcare in Ottawa