Awards & Recognition

Natchitoches Regional Medical Center once again has been honored with the prestigious Quality Texas Foundation (QTF) Governor’s Award.

The QTF recognizes the best organizations regarding best business practices following the National Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

QTF gives the Governor’s Award for the best organizations in Texas, Puerto Rico, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, and a part of Oklahoma annually. This year QTF recognized Natchitoches Regional Medical Center (NRMC) as one of the two top award recipients, and the only healthcare organization to earn this distinction.

NRMC was chosen for being a role model organization that demonstrates a strong dedication to quality, continuous improvement, and high performance. Specifically, QTF noted that NRMC was recognized for the highest level of quality and for exceptional performance in all areas of organizational management: leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus and results.

“We are honored the Quality Texas Foundation is recognizing us for a second time after having received the Governor’s Award in 2019. Yet, receiving the highest honor is not about the award per se or winning. Rather this award serves as an affirmation that our organization is heading in the right direction,” noted Kirk Soileau, Chief Executive Officer of NRMC. “While we still have much work to do,

we are firmly committed to our goals. We understand that the journey to ZERO Patient Harm and our aspiration to be a sustainable TOP 100 Hospital nationally is a marathon and not a sprint.”

“What is most humbling about receiving the QTF Governor’s Award this year is the fact that NRMC stayed the course over the past 26 months,” Soileau noted. “We have an amazing team who has continued to expand services year-over-year despite the global pandemic affecting both our community and state. If there is a positive aspect of the pandemic for NRMC, it is the fact that we have taken our community engagement and alignment to the highest level in our history. NRMC was the calm in the storm that the community could rely on. Thus, our role is even bigger as we strive to further improve the health and wellness of our region.”

The NRMC team will be celebrated at QTF’s next scheduled conference in June 2022.

Congratulations to the NRMC Wound Center on receiving the Center of Distinction Award; the prestigious Robert A. Warriner, III Clinical Excellence Award for 2021, and a 2021 President’s Circle Award recipient.

For more than a decade, Healogics has presented the Center of Distinction Award to acknowledge the hard work, dedication and accomplishments of Wound Centers that deliver care, treatment and services in a manner that exceeds the performance of other like Centers. Center of Distinction awards are

given to Centers that achieve or exceed outstanding clinical and operational results, including ≥ 92% Patient Satisfaction Rate, ≥ 75% Wound Adjusted Comprehensive Healing Rate and a ≤ 16% Outlier Rate.

To be awarded the Clinical Excellence Award, a Center must score in the top 10 percent of eligible Wound Care Centers for 2021 on the Clinical Excellence measure, which is the Comprehensive Healing Rate weighted by wound mix.

The 2021 President’s Circle Award is based on achieving or exceeding outstanding clinical and operational results in 2021. This award distinguishes winners as the best of the best.

“We are exceptionally proud of our outstanding wound care team,” explained Kirk Soileau, NRMC CEO. “Since opening, they have consistently set high standards of care and customer service and performed their work at the top deciles nationally. Their ability to heal problem wounds is astounding. They improve their patients’ quality of life by successfully treating wounds that impact every aspect of life: physically and emotionally. Most importantly, they are saving lives and limbs. Thank you to every member of the NRMC Wound Care team for your care and commitment to our community.”

NRMC’s Comprehensive Wound Care Center was awarded two prestigious national honors for 2019 by Healogics, the nation’s largest provider of advanced wound care services.

The Center received the Robert A. Warriner III, M.D., Clinical Excellence Award 2019 for their work in healing problem wounds. They scored in the top 10 percent nationally of eligible Healogics® Wound Care Centers® on the Clinical Excellence measure, which is the Comprehensive Healing Rate weighted by wound mix.  This award is named for Dr. Robert A. Warriner III, a pioneer in wound care and the former Chief Medical Officer for Healogics.

The Center also received Healogics Center of Distinction Award for 2019. This award is based on conducting the Medical Surveillance Review process per policy and excelling in the key performance indicators. including:

• Patient Satisfaction: Greater than or equal to 92%
• Healing Rate: Greater than or equal to 92%
• Outlier Rate: Less than or equal to 16%
• Median Days to Heal: Less than or equal to 28

The Quality Texas Foundation, the number one producer of National Baldrige Recipients, has selected Natchitoches Regional Medical Center for its highest recognition – the Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence.

For the second consecutive year and the third time in the last four years, Natchitoches Regional Medical Center has been recognized as a 100 SafeCare Hospitals® by The SafeCare Group® for low infections, low readmissions, low complications, high patient satisfaction, and high value.

Franklin Trust Ratings reviewed the performance of 2,800 hospitals participating in the Centers for Medicare Services Value Based Purchasing program and recognized NRMC as a Top 10 hospital in its size category for its overall performance regarding financial margin, safety, cost and value in 2018.

Louisiana Quality Foundation held an Award Ceremony at the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion and recognized four high-performing Louisiana organizations for their leadership, innovation and sustainability. NRMC received the Louisiana Performance Excellence Award — Level 2 for 2018.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center awarded NRMC the prestigious Pathway to Excellence designation in 2018. This program recognizes hospitals that have developed the essential elements of an ideal nursing practice that empowers nurses to be leaders, to be champions of patient safety and quality, to be decision makers, to serve as patient advocates, and to be grounded in a positive work/life balance. To earn Pathway designation, an organization must demonstrate that it has integrated 6 practice standards into its day-to-day operating policies, procedures, and management structure — shared decision-making, leadership, safety, quality, well-being, and professional development.

NRMC’s Wound Care program has received three national awards from Healogics:, the Robert A. Warriner III Center of Excellence award, President’s Circle award, and Center of Distinction award.

NRMC was named as a Top 100 Rural and Community Hospital by iVantage Health Analytics. The award is based on quality and outcomes, patient and safety satisfaction, and costs and charges.

The Louisiana Rural Health Association recognized NRMC for “Excellence in Financial Strength” and “Excellence in Outcomes.”

NRMC was named as a Pioneer in Quality by the Joint Commission, the nation’s leading accreditor of health care organizations. The award recognizes hospitals that report eCQM data, as well as share best practices for all hospitals in gathering, analyzing, and leveraging eCQM data for quality improvement. Of more than 3,200 Joint Commission hospitals, only 480 were named as Pioneers in Quality.

Funds for Safety, a safety grant program sponsored by Louisiana Hospital Association Trust Funds has annually awarded grants to NRMC for key initiatives including a $25,000 grant to NRMC for its Antibiotic Stewardship Program.

NRMC is a designated WellSpot. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) and Healthy Communities have partnered to help communities live healthier through tobacco-free initiatives, healthy meals, fitness programs, and more. Using wellness benchmarks, DHH determined NRMC meets the criteria for Level 2 Designation as a WellSpot.

The American Hospital Association filmed a training video at NRMC so that other hospitals could benefit from the best practices NRMC has in place to prevent patient falls. NRMC was one of only 11 hospitals nationwide to be selected for this nationwide honor.

In What’s Right in Healthcare, NRMC was recognized for its “Door to Doc” time of 20 minutes for non-life-threatening emergencies and the improvements made to streamline processes to ensure prompt care.

The Studer Group recognized NRMC for its exceptional employee engagement and teamwork. They featured NRMC in their publication “Hardwired Results.”