Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen has been a healthcare leader in our Valley Community for generations, a leadership role that has been recognized nationally.  Recently, The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Premier, Inc., as a result of an initiative to reward quality and performance among the nation’s hospitals, recognized our hospital as number one in the nation for the treatment of heart failure, and number two in the state for treatment of heart attack.  This success is an example of how evidence-based medicine and our process improvement program, Six Sigma, can dramatically improve patient care. Valley Baptist has made Six Sigma Quality one of our top corporate initiatives in order to maximize performance and patient satisfaction throughout our health system.

At Valley Baptist, your needs will be served by a great clinical and support staff.  Valley Baptist invests in our people through unique Performance Management and Leadership Excellence systems which help us to recruit, employ, train, reward, and retain “top talent” staff members to serve you and your family.  This team’s efforts to provide Relentless Service have resulted in additional recognition for our facility.  For example, our Inpatient Rehabilitation Dept. received a 5-Star Award from Professional Research Consultants for offering the top level of personalized care to our patients.  Our Emergency Department and our new Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory received 4-Star Patient Perception PRC Awards.

When it comes to technology, the future is happening now at Valley Baptist.  We are currently implementing a state-of-the-art information technology initiative which represents the beginning of a transformation in the way health care is practiced in the Rio Grande Valley.   Our new Information Management for Physician and Patient Access with Clinical Transformation (IMPPACT) initiative will benefit patients through higher quality care, greater patient safety, convenience, and easier access to health care and health information.  Patients’   physicians will be able to view medical records instantly on the computer -- saving time for patients, doctors and nurses, while simplifying many processes.  For example, once installation of the GE Centricity Enterprise system is complete, patients will no longer have to wait for their file to be located -- or for a hand-written prescription to be read.

We are proud of what is happening at Valley Baptist Health System, a fully integrated health system offering a full continuum of services to serve our growing community.  If you have a few minutes, you can subscribe online at this website to our E-Newsletter, which will keep you abreast of all the services, activities, health screenings and more that we have to offer.

Jim Wesson, FACHE Senior Vice President & Chief Executive Officer Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen