Recently, Becker’s Hospital Review, one of the leading health care trade publications, released the list of 2017 Top 100 Rural and Community Hospitals in the U.S.

The list measures hospitals’ ability to successfully manage risk, achieve higher quality, secure better outcomes, increase patient satisfaction and operate at a lower cost than peer facilities.

The year, Clark Regional Medical Center — your community hospital — is on the list. This is a tremendous testament to the hard work, dedication and tireless commitment of our hospital employees and medical staff. They go above and beyond every day to make sure our community members — each of you — are met with the highest quality, most compassionate care possible.

What you may not realize is that over the course of the past couple of years, our hospital has been implementing new protocols and safety mechanisms intended to increase patients safety and improve the overall patient experience. For example, we have:

— Implemented bedside shift reporting, which is intended to improve communication among care teams and better engage the patient in the care process;

— Introduced the use of safety boards, which offer employees and medical staff a simple strategy to make any potential threats to safety, as as steps being take to resolved the threat, visible to the entire care team;

— Engages in executive patient safety rounding, which involved frequent rounding by the hospital leadership team to ensure that staff concerns specific to safety are head while also building trust and rapport.

But, the best news is that our quality journey is far from finished. These initiatives and programs are only in their infancy. In the weeks, months and years to come, we will continue to evaluate our progress and look for ways to even further enhance the level of safety and quality care being delivered to every single person who sets food inside our hospital.

And the reason we do this is simple: you.

You see, at CRMC, the word “quality” is more than just another buzzword or phrase. It is our way of life, encompassing everything we do: how we care for patients, how we ensure the health and safety of each of our employees and how we contribute to the overall health and well-being of our communities.

Quality also means that every person at our hospital — our physicians, our employees in every department and our patients and their family members — plays an important role in the delivery of quality care. We constantly strive to improve how we provide care and enhance our patients’ experiences, and we work hard to maintain a culture that empowers everyone to feel ownership over the care and service we provide.

To that I am proud of this recognition is an understatement. But I am even more proud of the outstanding team of men and women who have so readily embraced our approach to quality and continuously give so much time and energy to the communities we serve. And it is because of you that we do what we do.

On behalf of CRMC, thank you for continuing to entrust us with your health care needs.

Cherie Sibley is chief executive officer at Clark Regional Medical Center.