ENTERPRISE — Wallowa Memorial Hospital has earned a five-star rating from a national program to assess the quality of rural hospitals and has won a spot on the program’s National Rural Honor Roll.

The five-star rating, the highest attainable, comes from the National Rural Rating System, which was developed in 2022 to establish criteria for rural and critical access hospitals, emergency departments and clinics. 

The criteria, which include patient satisfaction, quality of care and overall hospital performance, are based on the Care Compare Initiative from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but that initiative requires a minimum of 100 annual inpatient discharges to qualify. Wallowa Memorial, like most of the other critical access hospitals in the nation, doesn’t meet that minimum.

(In addition, the federal initiative doesn’t count “swing beds,” in which hospitals, frequently in rural areas, use their beds to provide nursing care and rehabilitation to patients who no longer require acute care.)

The National Rural Rating System, now based at the National Rural Health Association, was created to evaluate the performance of smaller hospitals, often located in rural areas. The program has been handing out awards for three years, but 2024 is the first year Wallowa Memorial has participated. 

Participating hospitals submit official reports from certified vendors, which survey overnight patients. To be eligible, hospitals must have a minimum of 24 survey responses over a rolling 12-month period.

Wallowa Memorial was the only Oregon facility to earn a five-star rating. In all, 22 facilities nationwide earned a five-star rating. 

The latest recognition for Wallowa Memorial is “amazing,” said CEO Dan Grigg, who started his job at the hospital about 18 months ago. “I knew before I came here that this was a hospital that got a lot of awards, but it just amazes me that they keep coming. I’m grateful for it. … I think it’s just ingrained in the culture here and the good people and the great things they do.” 

Wallowa Memorial Hospital is a 25-bed critical access hospital and a Level IV trauma center. (A Level IV trauma center can provide advanced trauma life support before transferring patients to a higher-level trauma center and can provide evaluation, stabilization and diagnostic capabilities for injured patients.)

For more information about the National Rural Rating System, go to the website RuralRatings.us.