We can tell you all day long we provide high quality care and excellent service in a safe environment, but how do you know that’s true?

Until a few years ago, people had to rely on their own health care experiences and those of their friends and family to make that decision. Now there are accrediting agencies like The Joint Commission and government programs like Medicare that regularly review our data and ask us for information about patient experiences and patient outcomes.

Consumer organizations and websites also provide information about how to choose a provider or a hospital. Some of that information comes from patient surveys that ask you to rate your experience at Albert Lea Medical Center.

If you’ve tried to make sense of online information about how Albert Lea Medical Center is doing and how we compare to other medical centers, you know it’s not easy.

You’ll find lots of statistics, variables and adjustments for size and specialties. Sometimes we don’t compare favorably with other health care organizations, as in the 2008 to 2009 Centers for Medicare Services report. Other times, we’re right at the national average for things like hospital-acquired infections and our scores have been better than the national average for preventing surgical infections.

It’s true no one is perfect but, honestly, we can do a whole lot better. Because in health care, our numbers are people. We’re measuring how well we care for them while they’re here and how well they care for themselves once they leave their doctor’s office with information about how to control their diabetes, or how to safely walk after hip replacement.

So until we are perfect, we’ll never be satisfied with how well we’re doing or the scores we get from any agency or organization that measure our performance or report our data.

Every day is a challenge for us as we try to improve our patients’ experiences and quality of care to assure them the best of outcomes. We spend hours every year training staff about service excellence, improving processes that could or did break down and working to standardize our care by following “best practices” identified by experts within ALMC, Mayo Health System or from across the country. As printed on all of our brochures, stationery and computer screens, “Every minute of every day … exceeding expectations, improving care, and savings lives.”

We are continually measured to see how well we’re doing those things and that information is available to help you make informed health care choices.

Mark Ciota, M.D., is the CEO of Albert Lea Medical Center.