The dashboard shows improvements for staff communication, retention, and engagement, as well as decreases in several infection rates that serve as national safety benchmarks. But it also shows relatively low scores when it came to how often patients recommended NHRMC or reported it as being a clean facility.
In November, NHRMC President Laurie Whalin said she was looking forward to “a landing page for all of the quality efforts that we’re doing, showing our results.” Whalin said that Novant could tell the public, “Hey, go here, look for real-time improvement, and we keep that continuously updated.”
Novant has repeatedly pointed to the lack of real-time data as an issue with the quality ratings from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Leapfrog, a national nonprofit hospital safety watchdog. Both organizations use data that can range from the past year to five years ago, meaning ratings don’t always provide a snapshot of contemporary hospital safety and quality.
The new landing page (or "microsite," as Whalin referred to it) includes information on Novant’s recent investments in NHRMC, a list of recent awards and recognitions, and the Novant Health NHRMC Dashboard, which promises to “regularly evaluate key metrics” related to the hospital’s focus on continuous improvement. Currently, the dashboard is a three-page document that people can download or view online.
Some of the metrics were discussed by top Novant officials when they presented to the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners earlier this month.
Related: Novant’s Five-Year Checkup (Sunday Edition)
Those include patient-reported ratings of communication by both nurses and doctors, which show year-over-year improvement from 2024 through 2025. That’s based on relatively up-to-date information, compared to the Fall 2025 Leapfrog score, which was based on older data, from 2023.
Novant officials have said their goal is to be in the top quartile and decile — that is, the top 25% and 10% — but the infographics only show the 50th and 90th percentile marks, so it takes a little visual guesswork to figure out where the latest scores land NHRMC among hospitals nationwide. (WHQR suggested adding a 75th percentile marker; Whalin said the hospital would discuss that feedback ahead of a future update.)
The data also shows strong retention of nursing staff and improvements to team engagement, up from 68% to 76% between 2022 and last year. That data, which is for Novant’s entire coastal region and not just NHRMC, lifts the area from the 37th percentile to the 62nd percentile — still below Novant’s goals, but indicating significant improvement.
The landing page also includes three types of infections, which are part of a set of ten outcome measures used by CMS and Leapfrog. The data shows clear year-over-year improvements from 2022 through 2025. That’s more current than the data used in the most recent Leapfrog score, which used data from 2024. That misses between 23% and 36% percent reductions, according to Novant’s dashboard.
However, the data does not include baseline rates — that is to say, what the actual scores were. So, while improvement is being made, the dashboard doesn’t actually show where NHRMC started and where they are now. (Whalin also said that's something they would consider in future updates.)
In addition to including just three of the ten outcome measures used by CMS, there are also many other safety components used by CMS and Leapfrog that aren’t featured on the dashboard. Whalin said more information would be added to the site over time.
The dashboard also includes two measures that were not presented to county commissioners earlier this month, data based on patients’ reports on whether they felt NHRMC was clean and whether they would recommend it.
Asked about this, a Novant spokesperson wrote, "We had 15 minutes to cover five years of progress. The microsite includes a variety of transparent metrics in addition to what was included in the PowerPoint, but a QR code linking to this information was included in the presentation."
[Note: WHQR emailed all five commissioners on Thursday afternoon to ask if they had any comments; by Friday afternoon, none had responded. This article will be updated with relevant responses, if any are received.]
While the cleanliness scores have increased from roughly 57% to 62% over the last year, that still puts NHRMC in the bottom half of hospitals nationwide — far from the top 10% or even 25%. Likewise, scores for what percentage of patients would recommend NHRMC have increased from 57.5% to roughly 63% over the last year (based on NHRMC's infographic, it’s hard to tell exactly what percentile this places the hospital at, but it is below the 90th percentile goal).
In response to the cleanliness score, Novant again noted that it was switching to a new contractor for ‘environmental services’ (i.e., cleaning and janitorial). Earlier this month, Novant responded to a WWAY report about a Facebook post from a family member of a patient at Novant New Hanover Regional Medical Center, describing unsanitary conditions.
“We just finalized a thorough vetting process and have engaged a new vendor to overhaul and manage our cleaning and environmental services program. As we prepare for this transition on March 1, our leadership team has implemented additional rounding and oversight measures to ensure our standards are met. We are confident that our new partner will deliver results to meet the level of service our community deserves and we are committed to upholding,” Whalin told WWAY, a statement Novant reshared this week.
This is actually the second new environmental services provider Novant has brought in over the last year. Last May, Whalin responded to concerns from patients and nurses by noting that Novant had recently brought in Sodexo to handle those issues. At the time, Whalin said Sodexo had lobbied for a larger staff and already had a good, longstanding relationship as the hospital’s food services provider. It’s not completely clear why Sodexo was dropped as an environmental servies provided — although it is still providing food services, according to Novant — but this month it brought in a new company, Crothall Healthcare, to handle janitorial services.
Novant also noted that the patient-reported ratings are based on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), a national, standardized, publicly-reported survey overseen by CMS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
A Novant spokesperson said there is some nuance in the ratings, because the results on their page are what’s known as “top box” scores. Basically, patients are asked to respond on a spectrum. Only the most positive responses count as a top box answer. “Bottom box” — meaning negative — answers don’t count, but neither do “middle box” answers — meaning intermediate or partially positive responses.
So, for example, a patient who responded “definitely no” or “probably no” when asked if they would recommend NHRMC would not be counted toward the ratings shown on the dashboard — but neither would a patient who responded with “probably yes” when asked if they’d recommend the hospital.
It’s also worth noting that while last year Whalin suggested the dashboard would have “real-time” data, Novant doesn’t interpret that to mean up-to-the-minute (or even the month) information.
“The data is real-time in that it is the most recent available and will be periodically updated. Keep in mind, some of these metrics are only measured quarterly, or even annually, such as employee engagement, which is measured once a year,” Whalin said.
