HCA Healthcare's Idaho hospitals recognized for safety excellence

Both HCA Healthcare hospitals in Idaho ranked among the top 10% in nation for their commitment to delivering safe, high-quality care, according to Healthgrades’ 2025 Patient Safety Excellence Award™.

Caldwell’s West Valley Medical Center and Idaho Falls’ Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (EIRMC) earned the prestigious award, which recognizes hospitals nationwide that provide quality care while preventing serious safety events.

“Protecting those who trust us with care is so important to us,” said Dr. Filip Roos, chief medical officer for HCA Healthcare’s Mountain Division, which is comprised of the two Idaho hospitals as well as peer facilities in Utah and Alaska. “Patient safety is everybody’s job, and this recognition from a trusted source like Healthgrades validates the efforts of our entire team to keep patients safe as part of our mission to improve lives.”

Recognition on this list is based solely on patient outcomes. To determine the top-performing hospitals for patient safety, Healthgrades evaluated risk-adjusted complication and mortality rates for approximately 4,500 hospitals nationwide. The annual study found that patients treated in hospitals that received the 2025 Patient Safety Excellence Award have a significantly lower chance of experiencing certain complications than patients treated at non-recipient hospitals.

These award-winning hospitals are proud to be part of HCA Healthcare, which continually learns from its 44 million annual patient encounters and shares new clinical protocols with its hospitals to improve patient safety and the quality of healthcare delivery. A total of 100 HCA Healthcare hospitals received this recognition, including three sister facilities in Utah that are also part of the Mountain Division.

Across HCA Healthcare, dedicated quality teams strive to engineer patient safety into day-to-day operations across the health system. These teams are responsible for overseeing event reporting, serious event analysis, safe tables, and technologies such as barcode medication administration, among other programs. Safety initiatives are measured partly through a Culture of Safety survey, which is designed to help drive safety agendas and ensure the voices of colleagues are valued and leveraged to deliver safe, quality care.

HCA Healthcare’s Patient Safety Organization (PSO), established more than a decade ago, is dedicated to improving patient safety and the quality of healthcare delivery by partnering with HCA Healthcare facilities to build systems, refine processes and foster a culture of safety. Intentionally focusing on protecting conversations around patient safety, the PSO holds an annual, enterprise-wide “Safe Table” campaign to encourage all colleagues to share concerns and ideas related to the delivery of safe, quality care.

The organization has a long history of prioritizing and working to continually improve patient safety and has worked with prominent public and private institutions on industry research, including:

• The INSPIRE trials, two large multi-state studies conducted at 59 HCA Healthcare hospitals that identified a better way to target appropriate antibiotics for patients hospitalized with pneumonia or urinary tract infection, enabling better antibiotic stewardship in hospitals. 
• The CLUSTER trial, a large multi-state study conducted at 82 HCA Healthcare hospitals that found an automated outbreak detection tool reduced the size of outbreaks by 64% in the trial period preceding the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Swap Out trial, which found that a nasal antibiotic ointment used daily for intensive care unit (ICU) patients in only one-third of U.S. hospitals at the time, is highly effective at preventing Staphylococcus aureus infections in critically ill patients, outperforming an antiseptic solution.
• The ABATE Infection Trial, which found that an infection control technique achieved a 31% reduction in bloodstream infections and nearly a 40% reduction in antibiotic-resistant bacteria among non-ICU patients with central line catheters and lumbar drains.
• The REDUCE MRSA study, which found that using antimicrobial soap and ointment to decolonize all ICU patients reduced bloodstream infections by 44% and MRSA by 37%.

HCA Healthcare has also helped develop evidence-based perinatal protocols through a longstanding partnership with March of Dimes, including prohibiting elective delivery prior to 39 weeks to help babies have a healthy start to life. Additionally, HCA Healthcare developed the Sepsis Prediction and Optimization of Therapy (SPOT) tool, a system to help clinicians more quickly identify patients with sepsis.